Full text of "MY LADY SUFFOLK"

See other formats

1 03 569

2MY LA.DY

uffollc

Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk

AFTER HOLBEIN

MY LADY

(Suffolk

A PORTRAIT OF
Catherine Wilkughby, Duchess of Suffolk

B Y

EVELYN READ

Alfred A . Knopf New York
1963

.L. C. catalog card number: 63-11109

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Copyright 1962 by Evelyn Read.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form -without permission in -writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer, -who may
quote brief passages and reproduce not more than
three illustrations in a review to be printed in a
magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United
States of America, and distributed by Random
House, Inc.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

Originally published in England by Jonathan Cape Limited as
CATHERINE^ DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

CATHERINE WILLOUGHBY, Duchess of Suffolk, was born a
Catholic and became a convinced and zealous Puritan; she
was born to a sheltered and secure life and, by her own
honesty and outspokenness, she courted persecution and
lived in danger. She was a woman of wit and beauty and
charm, and of great integrity. Her life would not be regarded
as important in the development of the politics and affairs of
England, but at least one great statesman cherished her
friendship, and many whose thinking and writing and
preaching were basic to the Protestant Reformation owed
much to her generosity and religious zeal and to the stimulus
of her eager mind.

This book is not a formal biography. Rather it is an attempt
to make a very vital sixteenth-century woman come to life
in the twentieth century; and if, now and again, I seem to
have attributed to Catherine of Suffolk thoughts or feelings
which cannot be documented, it is because my study of all
the material bearing on her life leads me to the belief that
they are valid. I have made, I think, no statement of fact that
I cannot support. Today, when differing forms of worship
are not only tolerated but taken for granted, it is not entirely
easy for us to credit the attitudes regarding religion which
prevailed among civilized peoples four hundred years ago, or
to believe that a woman like Catherine Willoughby could
feel as strongly as she did and could be persecuted simply
because she insisted upon worshipping her God according to
the dictates of her own conscience. But if we substitute

PREFACE

political or economic beliefs for religious beliefs, we can
perhaps more nearly understand the thinking and the actions
of those who fervently believed that change was not only
inevitable but desirable.

Catherine Willoughby was married twice, to two men
who were quite different from one another: the first a peer
of the realm, a soldier and courtier and the favourite of his
king; the second a quiet, scholarly man, of more humble
birth though still a gentleman and, like herself, a zealous
Puritan. She seems to have been happy in both of her mar-
riages, and she felt so strongly about the estate of matrimony
that she declined to participate, for her children, in the
sixteenth-century custom of arranging marriages with no
reference to love between the young people. In an age when
women were expected to be seen and not heard, Catherine
was seen for her beauty and heard for her intelligence and
wit, her spiritual integrity and zeal. What she believed in she
stood up for and worked for, but she would accept nothing
simply because it was the custom. She was born twenty years
after the beginning of the sixteenth century and died twenty
years before its end, but she might have lived successfully and
effectively in the twentieth century. She was a modern woman.

This story of Catherine has been written for my husband,
Conyers Read, who opened for me the door to the enchant-
ment of the sixteenth century and the fascination of research.
Working with him through the years was not only a com-
plete joy, it was also an illuminating and stimulating experi-
ence. At various times he urged me to write this book. For
his sake I wish it were better than it is. Whatever is good in it
belongs to him; its weaknesses are my own.

The list of those to whom I am indebted for help and

PREFACE

encouragement is long. I am extremely grateful to Sir John
Neale, for his encouragement, for his replies to my many
letters no question that I asked him was too slight for him
to answer in detail and for the helpful talks we had in his
home after he had read the typescript. I hold him in no way
responsible for faults, but I acknowledge his generous help
with deep gratitude. I thank Mr Noel Blakiston of the
Public Record Office and Mr John McKenzie of the British
Museum, who sent me microfilms of documents with great
promptness whenever I asked for them, so that I was able to
work from source material even before I could get to
England; when I did get to London, the staffs of both the
Museum and the Record Office gave me the same courteous
and helpful treatment to which I had become accustomed in
the years when I worked there with my husband. Mr Piper
and Mr Kerslake, of the National Portrait Gallery, were very
helpful in finding the portraits of the Duke of Suffolk and of
Richard Bertie; I acknowledge their help with thanks. I am
grateful to the Rev. Canon James L. Cartwright, archivist of
Peterborough Cathedral, who looked up for me, at a very
busy time in his own life, the facts about the burial of
Catherine of Suffolk's mother; and to Dr Louis B. Wright
and the members of his staff at the Folger Shakespeare
Library, who gave me co-operation and helpful suggestions.
I have borrowed great numbers of books from the libraries
of Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, and I am grateful
not only for the books but also for the librarians' patience
when I kept them far over my allotted time.

Miss Doris Coates, of the National Archives Register, and
Mrs Joan Varley, Mr Michael Lloyd and Mrs Owen of the
Lincolnshire Archives were all most helpful. I am very
grateful to Pastor Boeddinghaus of St WiUebrod's Church

PREFACE

in Wesel, for showing me through his church, which was
closed for repairs, for driving me to Santon and for informa-
tion about the Walloons; Professor Freysin of Weinheim
was also helpful. Professor Allan G. Chester of the University
of Pennsylvania was always ready to talk with me about
Hugh Latimer and the New Religion; I learned much from
him and am grateful for his help.

My good friend, Lady Le Maitre, who lives in Suffolk,
sent me information about the county and spent a week-end
driving me all about it, to Parham and Westhorpe and
Ufford Church; her help was invaluable. And I am very
grateful to the Earl of Ancaster, Catherine of Suffolk's
descendant, and to Lady Ancaster; they invited me, a total
stranger, to stay with them at Grimsthorpe and gave me the
room which, as far as they could be certain, was the room
the duchess had occupied. They showed me everything I
asked to see and more, and Lord Ancaster got out of safe
deposit for me to see and gave me permission to reproduce,
the miniature of Catherine which is the frontispiece of this
book.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my children, Polly, Liza,
Ned and Bunk, who have encouraged me at every turn, and
to my mother who has borne cheerfully with my moods of
alternate elation and gloom as I have worked on this book.

E. R.

Villa Nova, Pennsylvania
1961

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE 15

I BEGINNINGS 21

n HENRY'S ENGLAND 33

HI THE NEW RELIGION 50

IV EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET 64

V 'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS' 79

VI THE STORM BREAKS 97

vn EXILE no

VTH HOME PROBLEMS I3O

DC GRIMSTHORPE 147

X SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE 167

XI ENDINGS 193
NOTES 197
INDEX 201

ILLUSTRATIONS

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK frontispiece

From a miniature, after Holbein, at Grimsthorpe
(Reproduced by permission of the Earl of Ancaster)

CHARLES BRANDON, DUKE OF SUFFOLK

From the original by an unknown artist in the National
Portrait Gallery

CATHERINE OF SUFFOLK TO WILLIAM CECIL 88

First page of a letter, dated June 1552, in Catherine's hand, from
the original at the Public Record Office

RICHARD BERTIE, ESQUIRE l68

Artist unknown

(Art Trade, 1935; present location unknown)

A VIEW OF LONDON ABOUT THE YEAR 1560

(Grace Collection, British Museum)

A/LY LADY

PROLOGUE

THE sun over the county of Suffolk rises out of the
North Sea, covering the rolling fields with a rosy
mantle. On an early autumn morning the ripe fruits,
blackberries nestling luscious and purple among their green
leaves, cheerful red apples and plums hanging like round,
perfect garnets from branches bending low with their
succulent weight, all begin to glow, like coals in the heart of
a fire. The woodlands tall oak and graceful elm
gradually turn green, a shimmering deep emerald reflecting
the dancing light from the newly awakened sea, miles off
to the east, and here and there the silver shaft of a birch
emphasizes the blackness of the other trunks. A horse stamps
and whinnies, and another, a mile or so away, answers ; and
an early-rising peasant in brown jerkin and leather hose
comes out of a thatched cottage whose smoke rises like a
grey plume against the morning sky. He trudges along the
narrow lane between the hedgerows, a road which was black
and deserted an hour before. The little fish in the small rivers
which criss-cross the county come up to the surface, looking
for a chance insect to devour; their noses break the quiet
water, causing ripples to spread in jewelled circles, returning
the amethyst rays of the early morning sun with flashes of
topaz and diamond; while the willows on either bank droop
their delicate branches to caress the water with soft green
finger-tips. The world is mysterious, tentative, magic. And
suddenly it is day, the mystery is over and revealing light has

PROLOGUE

come. The silence is broken by the steady humming under-
tone of man and beast setting forth about their daily tasks,
the creak of carts, the muted jangle of metal against leather
as horses are harnessed and men go to their work in the
fields. The sky that was rosy with the dawn is a clear blue,
with fluffy white clouds racing across it from the haze of the
eastern horizon.

On such a morning in September of 1533, a girl of about
fifteen pushed open the leaded casement of her bedroom and
stood watching the Suffolk world come to life. The fields
that had been softly rippling a month before were a brown-
gold stubble left behind by the harvesters who had cut the
ripe grain. In the gardens below the open window, herbs
thyme, lavender and rosemary made a fragrant grey-green
sea on either side of paths bordered by low box, with here
and there the mustard yellow of yarrow, the dusty purple of
Michaelmas daisies. The odours from all of these, the spicy
tang of the herbs, the heavy bitter-sweetness of the yarrow
and the elusive fragrance of the asters, blended together in a
bouquet that rose gently on the morning air to caress the face
at the open casement.

The girl who gazed out into the morning, breathing deeply
of the sweet-scented air, was beautiful, slight and erect. Her
thoughtful eyes were set wide apart below a smooth brow in
a heart-shaped face. The nose was finely chiselled and
straight, and the sensitive mouth above an almost stubborn
little chin was barely parted as she stood there looking and
thinking. Her brown hair fell over slender shoulders as she
drew her furred robe more closely about her. The dawn was
chill, but by noon it would be warm on this sunny, late-
summer day.

She knew and loved every detail of the scene below her

PROLOGUE

window, knew it by heart from five happy years spent in this
great house where she had come as a child to live as the ward
of the duke, master of the house and of the gardens and fields
and woods as far away as she could see. Every bit of it was
dear to her, the spacious fields and the intimate gardens, the
winding streams with the little fish darting about in the clear
water, the brown roads and the prickly hedges. She loved the
heady fragrance of bean blossoms in the early summer, and
the bright flash of scarlet poppies nodding their heads in the
fields ; the gold of the wheat at harvest time, and the dark,
silent, sleeping countryside in the winter, now and then
covered by a thin blanket of snow, when all the fields would
be clean and white and the roads black and deep in mud. All
this she loved; and she loved most dearly the people who
lived in the house, who had made her, Catherine Willoughby,
very young and newly bereft of her father when she came
there, so very welcome.

The house was the manor house of Westhorpe, the country-
home of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, hearty, bluff and
very much alive ; gay and charming as he moved about his
house and lands, irresistible in steel armour as he rode his
horse in tournaments, balancing his spear lightly in his right
hand while his left held so gently the rein that controlled his
magnificent stallion. Charles Brandon was the favourite of
his king, the handsome and popular Henry VIII; he was the
beloved husband of Mary Tudor, King Henry's beautiful
younger sister who had married him, her girlhood love, soon
after the not unwelcome death of her first husband, King
Louis XII of France; and he was a devoted father to their
children, their daughters Frances and Eleanor, their son, Lord
Charles, and to little Catherine Willoughby, his ward since
1528, two years after the death of her own father.

PROLOGUE

On this September morning as she watched the sunrise,
Catherine Willoughby had a strange feeling, almost of
breathlessness, as she leaned her head against the side of the
window. So much had changed so quickly; and today there
would be, for her, the greatest change of all. Barely three
short months ago her elder foster-sister, Frances Brandon,
had gone to London to be married to the young Earl of
Dorset. The weeks before the wedding had been full of
excitement in the usually placid household, excitement and
preparation. And then her beloved foster-mother, the
beautiful, gentle Mary Tudor, had come back home from
the wedding, pale and so weak that she was scarcely able to
get to her room. The French Queen, as she was always
called, was very ill ; and Catherine and little Eleanor Brandon
tiptoed about the halls that had once echoed to their skipping
footsteps, like small, frightened ghosts, not knowing what
was happening behind the oak door, the door that had
always been open to them but was now tightly closed. In
June, when the scent of blossoms was sweet in the air, the
lovely lady who had brought such happiness into little
Catherine Willoughby's life, died. She lay on a bier in the
chapel of the manor house, where Catherine, as well as her
own two daughters, crept in to kneel and pray each morning
and each evening. And then there had been the long proces-
sion through the rough, winding roads to Bury St Edmunds,
fifteen slow miles away. Catherine and her own mother,
among the chief mourners, had ridden in the sad procession
immediately behind the French Queen's own two daughters,
who had followed their mother's body on horses covered
with black saddle-cloths which fell to the ground in dark
folds. As the solemn cortege passed through each village
along the way, groups of villagers met it, carrying torches.

PROLOGUE

Finally the Abbey church was reached: the same Norman
church with its sturdy columns and rounded arches where,
four hundred years before, the barons under Archbishop
Langton had drawn up the petition which was the basis for
Magna Carta. There requiem mass was said, the offerings of
palls of cloth of gold were made by the lady mourners, and
the long funeral sermon was preached by the Abbot of St
Benet. And the body of the French Queen, wife of Catherine's
guardian, the loving lady who had brought love and security
to the little ward, had been buried in the church near the
High Altar.

The members of the funeral procession returned home to
Westhorpe, to a house that seemed strangely empty and
bereft without its beloved mistress.

The French Queen's funeral had taken place on July 2ist.
And now it was early September, six weeks later, as Catherine
Willoughby watched the sunrise and thought her thoughts.
Later that day, she would stand beside the duke, the forty-
eight-year-old man, handsome and vigorous in his middle
age, whose ward she had been, and she would say the words
that would make her his wife. Catherine, Duchess of Suffolk
(she breathed the words to herself as she stood at the window),
at such a young age she would be the second peeress in the
kingdom after the ladies of the royal blood, mistress of this
house and of all she could see from her open casement.

Small wonder if the prospect was almost frightening to
the young girl. In a few short hours she would leave
childhood and become a woman; only a little time now, and
the man who had been as a father to her would be her hus-
band; still to be obeyed, to be sure, still her lord and master,
but yet quite different. Unlike the lot of many young girls
of her age in this sixteenth century, however, the man she

PROLOGUE

would stand beside would be no stranger but one she knew
and trusted and loved, one who had cared for her, in whose
house she had grown up happy and confident. He was a little
formidable, this handsome, gay and dashing duke, but kind
too, and gentle. And so she was not really afraid. But now it
would be she, Catherine, who would be at his side when he
went up to the Court in Westminster, at the king's command.
How to carry herself, deportment in all situations, was one
of the lessons the French Queen had taught her. Would she
remember all she had learned? Would she measure up when
she appeared before all the Court as the Duchess of Suffolk,
the wife chosen by the king's brother-in-law his favourite
her talented, brave and spirited husband ?

Catherine Willoughby's little chin set itself more firmly.
Her dark eyes, thoughtful still, had a determined gleam in
their depths, as she turned from the window to the waiting
maids who had come to dress her for her wedding.

BEGINNINGS

CATHERINE WiLLOUGHBY was born in March of 1519
or 1520. Parham Old Hall, the house in which she was
born, was in eastern Suffolk, near the little town of
Framlingham where the seat of the Dukes of Norfolk stood
the magnificent Norman fortress-castle with its broad
moat and high stone towers, its windows, long and narrow,
for bowmen. Parham Old Hall was a moated house, too, and
its moat washed the base of rosy brick walls, catching the
glancing rays of the Suffolk sun and tossing them back to
make patterns of shimmering light and shadow on leaded
windows and high chimneys.

Parham Old Hall had belonged to the Willoughby family
since the days of Edward II, and William Lord Willoughby
brought his Spanish bride, Maria de Salinas, home there in
1516 after their marriage in Greenwich. Lord Willoughby,
soldier and courtier, had fought for Henry VIII in his early
campaigns in France. His bride was the favourite lady-in-
waiting to Henry's wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and
her devotion to her royal mistress was the dominating force
in her life until the day, more than twenty years later, when
the unhappy queen, outcast and divorced, died in her arms.
At the time of Lord Willoughby 's marriage to the queen's
lady-in-waiting, Henry looked with favour on matches
between his own subjects and those of his wife's native
Spain. This was markedly so in the case of the Willoughbys,

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

the stalwart soldier, as English as the English oaks, and his
little dark-eyed Spanish bride. The king gave handsome
proof of his pleasure in this particular wedding by a large
grant of lands in Lincolnshire, including the reversion of the
manor of Grimsthorpe, occupied by the Dowager Countess
of Oxford, to come upon her death to Lord Willoughby and
his wife Maria. Henry also paid the new Lady Willoughby
the signal compliment of naming one of his new ships after
her, the Mary Willoughby. The atmosphere was altogether
felicitous for Lord Willoughby and his young wife; wealth,
position, their sovereign's favour all were theirs as they
started their married life. And all were theirs that March day
when their baby girl was born, and was christened by the
name of Catherine, the queen's name. The little Norman
church in Ufford, close by Parham, was largely built by
Catherine Willoughby's ancestors, and she is said to have
been baptized there at the beautiful fifteenth-century font,
carved with roses and with the shields of Willoughby and of
Ufford. The magnificent tabernacle cover of the font rises
eighteen feet in intricately carved, receding tiers of canopied
niches, exquisitely painted and gilded, to where, at the top,
stands a gilded pelican, medieval symbol for Christ.

The England into which Catherine Willoughby was born
was Catholic England, loyal to the Pope and to the bluff,
hearty king, Henry VIII, and his wife, the Spanish princess of
Aragon. Little Catherine Willoughby, baptized in the
Catholic faith, was confirmed in the same faith, as were all
English children in those days. Stephen Gardiner, afterwards
Bishop of Winchester, was Catherine's godfather; thirty
years later, in the reign of Henry's daughter Mary, when
Gardiner was at the height of his power as the queen's Lord
Chancellor, he spoke of the time when he was Catherine's

BEGINNINGS

'gossip' and she was 'as earnest as any' in the Roman faith.
That later day was quite a different time in England, and
Gardiner was then trying to trap Catherine and imprison her
for heresy. But in 1520, England gave little outward sign of
the storm that was in the offing, a storm whose winds would
sweep over her, tearing her from the Roman Church and
setting in motion forces, religious and secular, undreamt of
by most Englishmen in the year of Catherine Willoughby's
birth.

In 1520 the king and queen had one daughter, Mary, four
" years older than Catherine Willoughby, and they were still
hoping for a son to inherit the crown of England. Relations
with Spain and with the Pope were warm and harmonious
at that time. Henry's Lord Chancellor, Thomas, Cardinal
Wolsey, resplendent in his crimson robes, secure in his
position of influence, was, next to the king himself, all-
powerful. If there were mutterings of discontent among the
nobles or the bourgeoisie because of Wolsey's overbearing
manner, his arrogance and his power, they were as yet only
mutterings. Wolsey was a cardinal of the Roman Church;
certainly there was little if any doubt voiced by most English-
men that the only true Church was the Church of Rome, the
only true faith the Roman faith. It was not until much later,
after Henry had broken from Rome and established his own
Church, free from allegiance to pope or cardinal, that
Englishmen openly questioned the rightness of the Roman
position or the position of a cardinal of the Church of Rome.
It was still later that some free spirits found even Henry's
English Church too formal, too papistical in its liturgy and
vestments, its veneration of saints and belief in purgatory, and
turned to the simpler forms of worship, influenced by
Continental thinkers and preachers, thus starting what would

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

become the Puritan movement in England. Catherine
Willoughby was one of these free spirits. But in her child-
hood she was a Roman Catholic.

Most of Catherine's early childhood was spent at Parham
Old Hall. She was a solitary little girl, trotting through the
halls, looking up at the knights in armour, the animals
hounds and horses woven into the tapestries that hung on
the walls of the great gallery, or playing in the gardens
under the tall trees, watching the shadows on the water of
the moat. Her parents were away much of the time : her
father campaigning for his king or serving him at Court,
her mother waiting upon Queen Catherine. Her mother, in
fact, was one of the select group for whom a room was
provided at Court, for her to stay at the palace near the
queen. And so little Catherine knew hardly anything of
family life, of the uninterrupted devotion of a loving mother,
the day-to-day association with a gay, handsome father. She
was alone, except for loyal servants. She saw the seasons
change, smelled the fragrance of the blossom as blackberry
and hawthorn came into white flower in the late spring, felt
the warm sun of Suffolk in July and August, the chill air and
the tangy breezes blowing from the sea, only twenty miles
away, in the winter.

Catherine's father died on October ipth, 1526, and the
little girl became the Baroness Willoughby, heiress to her
father's fortune 1 and to such lands as did not, by entailment,
have to pass to male heirs. In this case the male heir was her
father's brother, Sir Christopher Willoughby, who tried to
make trouble over Catherine's inheritance, accusing her
mother of such misdemeanours as keeping the news of his
brother's illness and death from him, destroying evidence
and even taking from the house articles of value which by

BEGINNINGS

right belonged to him. Finally the differences were straight-
ened out, and though there was never any affection between
Lord Willoughby's widow and daughter and his brother,
neither was there active enmity.

Upon her father's death, Catherine Willoughby became a
ward of the Crown. In the sixteenth century, among the
nobility and wealthier gentry, when a father died, his child,
if a minor, became a royal ward. The Crown had jurisdiction
over this child and his (or her) moneys and estates, from
which the Crown, of course, derived revenues. In most cases
the wardship was sold by the Crown, acting through the
Court of Wards ; in the case of a ward such as Catherine
Willoughby, who was heir to a large fortune, the wardship
was sold to someone of wealth and position, who paid
handsomely for it, for the opportunity to make considerable
money from the administration of the ward's affairs. In
March of 1529, the wardship of Catherine Willoughby was
bought by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, for
.2,666 13$. 4d., a very substantial sum of money. 2

Charles Brandon was said to be the only man Henry VTII
ever really loved. His father was William Brandon, standard-
bearer for Henry VII at the Battle of Bosworth Field, where
Richard III himself killed him. Charles was therefore born
no later than 1485 the year of Bosworth. From the very-
start of Henry VIII's reign, he was a great favourite with the
king. He was not unlike Henry physically, tall, sturdy,
valiant. He loved outdoor sports, particularly jousting, at
which he excelled, a sport in which Henry, too, was profi-
cient. In the first year of Henry's reign, Charles Brandon was
a squire of the royal body, and from then on he proceeded
from one position to another, higher one, in the king's
service. In 1514, five years after Henry's accession, he was

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

created Duke of Suffolk, which raised him in rank to a
position second only to that of the Duke of Norfolk, the
first peer of the realm.

At the time of Suffolk's purchase of the wardship of little
Catherine Willoughby, he was married to Henry's younger
sister, Mary Tudor. She was his third wife. Suffolk's life,
before he married Mary, had been colourful, to put it
mildly. He had been betrothed and unbetrothed, married
and unmarried. But none of his adventures had cost him the
affection or confidence of his sovereign. Probably his
marriage to Mary came closer to doing that than anything
he ever did. Mary had married, in 1514, King Louis XII of
France. It was, of course, a marriage made for political
reasons. Mary was eighteen, charming and beautiful, and,
most important, the sister of the King of England; Louis was
a tired, worn-out fifty-two, neither handsome nor alluring.
But he was the King of France. In persuading his sister to
agree to the match, Henry had promised her that if the
French king should die, she should have her own choice in a
second marriage. And so she married Louis and was crowned
Queen of France; and she was known as the French
Queen until the day of her death. Henry's emissary to her
coronation was the Duke of Suffolk, who witnessed
the ceremonies and covered himself, and England, with
glory in the jousts and pageantry held in honour of the
event. The marriage was of short duration Louis died the
following January ist. And Suffolk, only just returned to
England from Mary's coronation, was sent back to France
as Henry's ambassador to Francis I, the new king.

Francis had lost no time in pressing his attentions upon the
widowed queen, who did her best to repel his overtures.
Finally she confessed to him her love for the Duke of

BEGINNINGS

Suffolk. But she was fearful that her brother, thinking only
of the political usefulness of her marriage, would forget his
promise to allow her to choose her own husband. Further-
more, she was well aware that most of Henry's council,
already jealous of Suffolk's hold on the king's affection, would
do all in their power to prevent his marriage to her, the king's
sister. So she persuaded Suffolk to marry her before Henry
could once more select a bridegroom for her, and they were
wed secretly, in Paris, early in 1515.

Henry was outraged at their presumption, and many of
the council, particularly those of the old nobility, would have
had Suffolk's head. As Mary knew, they regarded him as an
upstart, and their jealousy of his position made them seize
upon any pretext to discredit him in the king's eyes. But they
did not succeed. In the end, Henry relented, satisfied by the
gift of Mary's plate and jewels and a bond of .24,000 to
repay, in yearly instalments, the expenses he had incurred in
connection with her marriage to Louis. Actually, in his
secret heart Henry probably sympathized with his sister and
Suffolk, and found it hard to condemn her marriage to this
man whom he loved. Impulsive himself, he must have under-
stood their impulsiveness. And so they came back to England
in April, and on May I3th they were married, in a second
ceremony, in the presence of the king at Greenwich.

They went to live in the country quietly at first, until the
displeasure of the nobles had somewhat blown over; but
gradually they took more and more part in Court life, as
King Henry wished them to do. In 1520, they accompanied
Henry and his queen across the Channel to the Field of the
Cloth of Gold, where the fine quarters allotted to them were
immediately next to those of Henry and Catherine of
Aragon. But for the most part, whatever official duties

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Suffolk had to perform for his sovereign, the French Queen
preferred to live quietly at home. She was a very lovely
young woman with a stately grace, an ornament to any
Court ceremonial. But she was also rather a frail woman, and
found the peaceful life in her home at Westhorpe far
pleasanter than the hectic existence that was Court life. She
loved her gardens, and spent long and happy hours planning
them and supervising the work of her gardeners. And she
took great care of the running of her large establishment.
Mary was a kind and gentle person, the sort of woman who
would have taken a personal interest in the welfare of the
members of her household, who would have commanded
the very real devotion of everyone who knew her, from her
own husband and children down to the least scullery maid.
And as often as he could be away from the king's service,
Suffolk was at home with her. It was a warm, happy life, the
life of two people who were in love and whose greatest
happiness came from each other and from their children and
their home.

This was the home and the atmosphere into which little
Catherine Willoughby moved in 1528. The countryside was
not strange to her. Westhorpe was only about twenty-five
miles to the north-west of Parham, farther from the sea, so
that the breezes blowing across the fields and through the
woods were drier and without the salt smell of those that
blew over Parham. But from the rich earth the tall oaks
reached up into the sky almost farther than a little girl could
see as she stood on the ground, her head tipped back, looking
upward. Gorse had grown around Parham, in cheerful
stretches of bright yellow. About Westhorpe the acres of
golden grain, wheat and oats and barley, waved in the wind,
green in the early summer, turning to gold as the year grew

BEGINNINGS

older. They stretched as far as the eye could see, broken by
blackberries and hawthorns, the clumps of woodland and the
willows by the streams.

There were two other little girls at Westhorpe, Frances and
Eleanor Brandon, the two daughters of the duke and the
French Queen. Frances was three years older than Catherine,
Eleanor about her age. Together they played under the trees
or walked in the fragrant herb garden. They learned to
distinguish between the different herbs, and the uses, medi-
cinal or culinary, of each one; they watched the French
Queen supervising her household servants and her gardeners,
and saw how a great lady treated those who were serving her,
and how a household should be run. This was part of the
education of a young girl. Giovanni Bruto, one of the
sixteenth-century writers on the subject of educating young
women, said that a girl

shall learn not only all manner of fine needlework ...
but whatsoever belongeth to the distaff, spindle and
weaving, which must not be thought unfit for the
honour and estate wherein she was bom . . and which is
more, to the end that becoming a mistress she shall
look into the duties and offices of domestical servants,
and see how they sweep and make clean the chambers,
hall and other places, make ready dinner, dressing up the
cellar and buttery, and that she be not proud that she
should disdain to be present ... at all household works.

Such training, under the kindly and gentle hand of the
French Queen, stood Catherine Willoughby in good stead
all through her life, when she had to manage her own large
household and did so with ease and grace.

The little girls had their lessons at Westhorpe, too. It-is not

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

clear how much formal education Catherine Willoughby
ever had. She was not a learned woman, never a 'blue-stock-
ing' in the way in which the brilliant Cooke sisters were.
She was intelligent, however, and eager. Reading and writing
she learned, of course, and she may have had some little
Latin and Greek. Undoubtedly she learned some music,
probably how to play on a musical instrument. Music
played no real part in Catherine's later life, but practically all
the daughters of the gentry learned how to play, and
Catherine was probably no exception. Deportment was an
important part of her education, a lesson which she learned
not only from precept but also from being constantly
influenced by the actions and ways of the charming and
cultivated mistress of the house in which she lived. Good
manners, too, were stressed as an important part of the
education of a girl-child in the sixteenth century, and
Catherine learned that lesson well. How much she had
learned from her own mother is not certain, or whether she
had had tutors at Parham before she came to Westhorpe.
Maria de Salinas had not been a bad mother, but her first
preoccupation had always been her duty to the royal mistress
who was the primary object of her devotion. And so she was
away from Parham and from her little daughter rather more
than she was at home. It was quite different at Westhorpe,
where the children, Frances and Eleanor and little Catherine,
never took second place to any outsider, even a queen, and
where their entire education was directed by the mistress of
the house.

By the end of the 15208, the king had sent Queen Catherine
from the Court, and his infatuation with Anne Boleyn was
an open secret. It was an infatuation which neither the French
Queen nor her husband the duke shared or even approved.

BEGINNINGS

They had affection and respect for Queen Catherine; they
had neither for Mistress Boleyn, and while they dared not
openly oppose the king, they stayed away as much as they
could from a Court which had become quite uncongenial to
them both. Suffolk was obliged to be in more or less frequent
attendance upon the king, but between her health, which was
never very robust, and her responsibilities at home, the
French Queen had ample excuse for staying away from
Court, and she made the most of it.

And then, in the spring of 1533, Frances Brandon was
married to Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. It was an
important wedding; the eldest daughter of the king's sister
and the second peer of the realm, was a bride in whose veins
flowed royal blood, while Dorset himself held a position of
importance at Court. Frances Brandon's wedding took place
in London, a London that was preparing, without enthusiasm,
for the coronation of Anne Boleyn which, now that Henry's
divorce from Catherine of Aragon was zfait accompli, would
take place with great pomp at Westminster Hall, soon after
Frances Brandon's marriage.

As soon as her daughter's wedding was over, the French
Queen returned to Westhorpe. In the best of health, she
would have found it difficult to witness the coronation of a
woman whom she held in the low esteem in which she held
Anne. But she was not in good health; the wedding festivities
had been an exhausting ordeal for her and she left London for
her home in Suffolk with a sigh of relief. Her husband was
obliged to remain at Court; as Earl Marshal and High
Steward for the day, he had to take a prominent part in the
coronation ceremonies. So, too, did Dorset, her new son-in-
law, who carried the sceptre in the procession.

The wedding festivities had been, in fact, more than the

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

French Queen's frail body could stand. She got back to
Westhorpe, but soon after her arrival there she was very ill.
The news of her illness reached her husband in Westminster,
and he and Dorset left the Court with all possible haste, and
rode eastward as fast as their horses could gallop. They were
not in time. Before they reached Westhorpe the French
Queen was dead. She died on June 24th, 1533.

Her body lay in state in the private chapel for three weeks,
and then came the solemn procession along the Suffolk roads,
fifteen miles, to the Abbey church of StEdmundsbury, where
she was buried. She still lies there, in what is now Bury St
Edmunds; the Abbey church was destroyed later, but her
body was reinterred in St Mary's church in the Abbey
churchyard.

Barely three months later, in September, the Duke of
Suffolk married his ward, Catherine, Baroness Willoughby.
In one brief summer Catherine's status had changed from
childhood to womanhood, from the light-hearted ward of
the handsome duke to his wife, mistress of his house and
servants, the second peeress of the realm.

HENRY'S ENGLAND

BY sixteenth-century standards, neither the speed with
which the widower Duke of Suffolk remarried nor the
difference in age between him and his bride was
unusual enough to cause surprise. Widows or widowers
often remarried in what would be called today indecent
haste; probably the most familiar case is that of Catherine
Parr, who married the Lord Admiral only five weeks after
the death of her husband, Henry VIII. As for the difference
in their ages Catherine Willoughby was in her early teens,
while the duke was at least forty-seven such an age-spread
between a bridegroom and his bride was not unique. The
marriage, however, did cause some comment in Court circles.
Chapuys, the ambassador of the Emperor Charles V of Spain,
reported to his master on September 3rd:

On Sunday next the Duke of Suffolk will be married to
the daughter of a Spanish lady named Lady Willoughby.
She was promised to his son, but he is only ten years
old; and although it is not worth writing to your
Majesty, the novelty of the case made me mention it.

The ambassador did not say what it was that he considered
novel, and no one else seemed to think the matter strange
enough for comment. Chapuys was probably wrong in one
respect: according to the Dictionary of National Biography, the
son of the duke and the French Queen was born in 1516,

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

which would have made him seventeen when his father
married Catherine Willoughby. If that is so, and if in fact he
was to have married Catherine, it is puzzling that they had
not already been married, or at least formally betrothed,
before the French Queen's death; they were a proper age for
marriage according to the custom of the time. The boy was
probably delicate he may have inherited his mother's frail
physique for he died in March of 1534, only six months
after his father's marriage to Catherine. Gossip, again
Spanish, said that he died of a broken heart. But this is hard
to believe of any normal lad.

Catherine's marriage to the duke had made her mistress of
the house in which she had lived as a daughter for nearly half
of her short life. If the transition was difficult for her, she
showed no sign of it in her outward demeanour. Little is
recorded about the early years of her life as Duchess of
Suffolk; on the subject of her marriage there is a blank.^But
Catherine herself was never a blank. She was young, she was
inexperienced, and the early years of her marriage to the
duke were years of gaining confidence, learning to carry her
newly acquired dignity, how to be mistress of a great house-
hold, wife of an experienced man with an important position
both in the county and at Court. There was nothing of
national import in that life of hers, and so hardly any records
have been preserved. But she seems to have been not un-
happy as Suffolk's wife; he was a man of great charm and
personal magnetism, very proud of the beauty and of the
developing intelligence and wit of his young wife.

The period during which Catherine Willoughby, Duchess
of Suffolk, was maturing into womanhood was a time of
violent change in England, political and religious upheaval,
which had a deep and penetrating effect upon the thinking

HENRY'S ENGLAND

and the life of the young duchess. Brought up in the comfort-
able and secure imprisonment that was the life of a well-to-do,
noble child, Catherine's mind had never remained closed,
comfortably or otherwise. From her childhood when, as a
very little girl, Catherine had played alone in the halls and
gardens of Parham Old Hall, her mind had been active and
questioning. In her childhood, however, there had been little
to question. The Tudors were established and had sat for
thirty-five years upon the throne of England. The gay and
popular king, Henry VIII, bluff Kong Hal, sat on the throne
at Westminster, his queenly and admirable Catherine by his
side. No Englishman was ever seriously to question the
Tightness of Henry as King of England. As for the Church:
the Pope in far-off Rome was the head of that Church, and
the king should and did lead the kingdom in worshipping
according to the ritual and belief of the Roman Church; not
many Englishmen, hardly any of them actively or publicly,
questioned the wisdom of that either certainly not a little
girl playing by herself in Suffolk. Such things were beyond
the thoughts of a child, and they would hardly have been
questioned even by those whose talk she might hear, whose
ideas she might absorb. But 'why' is the "word of children,
and there is no reason to suppose that little Catherine
Willoughby was different from other children in wanting to
know the answers to her questions. She was to develop into a
woman with a mind of her own, with strong opinions based
upon her own thinking. It would not be surprising if the
habit of thinking for herself which was to characterize her all
through her life was formed very early, as a little girl who
seldom had anyone to whom she could turn with the count-
less questions of childhood.

The changes in England which were to have a far-reaching

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

effect upon the life and thinking of Catherine Willoughby
had begun to take place even before her marriage to the Duke
of Suffolk. Henry VIII was all but fanatical in his wish to
have sons to inherit the throne of England, and to make sure
that the Tudor line would continue after his death. Only one
of the children of Catherine of Aragon had lived a
daughter, Mary. And some time before 1530, Henry had
realized that his wife would have no more children. How
much his subsequent acts were motivated by his very real
wish for a son, how much by the fact that he had wearied of
Catherine of Aragon and was infatuated with Anne Boleyn,
who was willing to become his wife but not his mistress, is
beside the point. He divorced his Spanish queen, and in so
doing he broke with the Pope and the Roman Church and
set up his own Church in England on the pattern of the
Roman Church, with the same ritual and many of the same
priests, but without allegiance to the Pope.

The whole business of Henry's divorce and his marriage to
Anne was distressing to the Duke of Suffolk and the French
Queen, who loved and respected Catherine of Aragon; it was
disturbing to Catherine Willoughby, whose own mother
was so devoted to her royal mistress. Suffolk's loyalty to his
king, however, was very deep, and he never let his own
opinions regarding Henry's marital escapades cloud that
loyalty. The French Queen died even as Anne Boleyn was
being crowned. And Catherine Willoughby's first appear-
, ance at Court as Duchess of Suffolk was very possibly at the
j christening of Anne Boleyn's baby, the infant princess
Elizabeth, when the Duke of Suffolk was one of the sup-
porters of the old Duchess of Norfolk, the baby's godmother.
Anne Boleyn was no better than she might have been.
And she was never popular in England. She was vain and

HENRY'S ENGLAND

overbearing," and she was shrewish. There were few tears
shed for her when she was executed for treason in 1536. One
thing about Anne, however, was important in the story of
Catherine Willoughby: she was very much interested in the
reformed religion. During her brief period of ascendancy, her
husband, the orthodox King Henry, was tolerant of the
movement and interested in it to the point that men were
licensed to preach at his Court who were the spokesmen of
reform, men who had studied and were expounding the
beliefs and tenets of the Continental thinkers and divines.
These men were preaching not only the break from Rome;
they were promoting a simpler Church, a service in English
which the people could understand, and, basically important,
they were promoting the Bible in English and the teaching
in English of the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Com-
mandments. Thomas Cranmer was, of course, the foremost
of the Protestants Cranmer whom Henry had contrived
to make Archbishop of Canterbury in order that he might
manage the divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Cranmer
was a strong supporter of religious reform, but he was
discreet too. Alone among the liberal ecclesiastics, he never
lost his hold on the king's loyalty and affection. But there
were numbers of others in the decade of 1530, men who were
zealous and outspoken champions of reform. Of these the
most eloquent was Hugh Larimer, one of the leaders of the
group that has come to be known as the Cambridge Re-
formers, since many of them came from the University of
Cambridge. Hugh Latimer preached for the first time before
the king at the Court at Windsor on March I3th, the second
Sunday in Lent of 1530. Thereafter he preached frequently
before Henry, who made him Bishop of Worcester in 1535.
Other reformers, men of zeal and conviction, preached at

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Court during this period; but Latimer was the most import-
ant, he was the most eloquent and the most influential. And
so, at the impressionable age of her mid-teens, the young
Duchess of Suffolk, at Court with her husband, often listened
to the sermons of Hugh Latimer, listened with the rapt
attention of a thoughtful young woman just finding out for
herself exactly what she thought and what she believed. It is
certain that Latimer and the duchess met and talked together
and that, during the 1530$, she was exposed to the brifliance
and sincerity of this man, one of the greatest and most
powerful exponents of religious reform in sixteenth-century
England.

During all the vicissitudes and changes of Henry's reign,
the Duke of Suffolk served his king with loyalty and devo-
tion, performing whatever services his sovereign asked of him
to the best of his ability, even when they were difficult or
personally distasteful. As Suffolk never swerved in his
loyalty to his king, Henry never swerved in his loyalty to the
duke. And Catherine of Suffolk stood staunchly by her
husband, giving him the devotion of a loving wife as she
herself took an increasing part in her husband's life and in the
activities of the Court.

Almost the first task required of Suffolk, after his marriage
to Catherine Willoughby, was one which was extremely
difficult for him. It was one which caused sorrow to his
young duchess and to her mother, the Dowager Lady
Willoughby. Suffolk was sent, in charge of a small group, to
Buckden Palace in Huntingdonshire, where the divorced
queen Catherine of Aragon was living, with orders from

HENRY'S ENGLAND

Henry to dismiss a number of her servants, to swear the
remainder to her as princess, not queen, and finally to remove
Catherine herself to Somersham, in the Isle of Ely, an
unhealthy and unpleasant place in the middle of the Fens.
Suffolk of course undertook the mission, and he did his best
to carry out his master's wishes. But he was not happy about
it. The Spanish ambassador told the Emperor Charles, his
master :

The Duke of Suffolk, before he left the city on such an
errand, confessed, and partook of the Communion, as
his mother-in-law [Maria de Salinas] has sent to inform
me; declaring at the time of his departure that he
wished that some accident might happen to him on the
road that should exempt him at once from accomplish-
ing such a mission on such a journey.

Chapuys was always ready with his comments, and not
always accurate. Also he was a staunch adherent to Catherine
of Aragon. But in this case what he said probably reflected
the duke's feeling pretty closely. No accident did occur,
however. Suffolk was received by Catherine and declared to
her the king's command. Catherine refused to budge; the
duke reported to the Privy Council that 'the Princess
dowager is the most obstinate woman that may be. There is
no remedy but to convey her by force to Somersham.'
Force Suffolk did not use. It was fortunate for him that he
had not been instructed to use it, for it would have been
next to impossible for him to have removed forcibly, to an
unpleasant place, a woman whom he revered and respected,
who was loved by his wife, Catherine, and by his late wife,
the French Queen. So, although Suffolk conveyed the king's
messages and orders to Catherine of Aragon, he left that

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

lady in Buckden, exactly where she was. And there she
stayed until some time during the next year, 1534, when she
moved to Kimbolton, not far from the town of Huntingdon,
where she continued for the year and a half that was left to
her of life, somewhat more comfortable than she had been at
Buckden, but still a virtual prisoner.

In December of 1535, Catherine of Aragon was critically
ill. The news of her condition reached Catherine of Suffolk's
mother at her house in London late in the month. Lady
Willoughby had been unable to get licence from the king to
visit her royal mistress. She was still unable to secure it. But
in refusing her permission, Henry did not reckon on the
resourcefulness and determination of Catherine of Aragon's
lady-in-waiting. She was no longer young, but she set out
from the Barbican, her London house, on horseback in the
dark hours before dawn on New Year's Eve. Out of the city
she rode, and up the North Road leading to Huntingdon.
It was a tough ride for a woman, in the cold raw air through
a countryside bleak and barren in the grey half-light of
winter. It was a hazardous ride through sparsely inhabited
country, where rogues and vagabonds in those days of
poverty and unemployment would not have hesitated to
waylay an apparently affluent woman and her small group of
servants. A good deal of Catherine of Suffolk's character, her
courage and determination, came to her from her Spanish
mother. Lady Willoughby got to the house where her dying
mistress lay; somehow she gained entry, and once inside she
found her way to the queen's chamber and never left it until
six days later, after the unhappy queen had died in her arms.

Catherine of Aragon was buried in the Benedictine Abbey
of Peterborough (now Peterborough Cathedral). Frances
Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset,, was the chief mourner, and

HENRY'S ENGLAND

the young Duchess of Suffolk was the second mourner.
Not long after Queen Catherine's death, her successor, Anne
Boleyn, was put in the Tower, attainted of treason and
finally executed.

In the autumn of 1536 a rebellion against Henry's govern-
ment took place in Lincolnshire, and spread to the counties to
the north. It was known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, and was
a protest, among other things, against the suppression of the
monasteries which was taking place throughout England.
The Duke of Suffolk was in charge of the army which put
down the uprising in the county of Lincoln, and in that
particular county it was put down quickly. While the duke
was busy fighting the rebellion, his young duchess was at
home in Lincolnshire; by 1536, Catherine and Charles
Brandon made either Tattershall Castle or Grimsthorpe in
the county of Lincoln their principal residence, only going
back to Suffolk when business demanded their presence
there. Lincolnshire was not unlike Suffolk, perhaps less
sunny, and on the whole, damper, but it was a pleasant
countryside, and Catherine was always happy there. During
the rebellion, it was not altogether the safest place for the wife
of the man who was suppressing the rebels, not as safe as
London would have been. But in Lincolnshire, Catherine
was near her husband, and could see him occasionally, and
so in Lincolnshire the stout-hearted duchess stayed, and
stayed in complete safety as it turned out. Later on, Henry
recognized the services of the duke in putting down the
rebellion by handsome grants of land in the county to him
and his duchess, lands close to Grimsthorpe which, of course,
belonged to the duchess as an inheritance from her father.

By 1537, Catherine and Charles Brandon had two sons.
Their first boy was born in September of 1535. They named

4-1

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

him Henry, and the king was his godfather; King Henry,
himself so desirous of having a son of his own, was happy to
stand sponsor for the little son of his favourite. Early in
1537, a second baby was born to the duchess, a boy whom
she named after his father, Charles Brandon. And on October
I2th, 1537, Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife, whom he had
married soon after Anne Boleyn's execution, gave the king
his son and heir. The king's joy and the joy of the country
knew no bounds. Now the Tudor line would go on ! Now
the government was secure ! It never occurred to anyone in
the year 1537 that a girl-child could carry on that line; it was
beyond the imagination of even the wildest dreamer that the
sovereign who would bring that line to its superbly successful
culmination would be the slender, auburn-haired little girl,
Elizabeth, who watched as her baby brother was baptized.

When he was a week old, the baby prince was christened
in the chapel at Hampton Court, with Thomas Cranmer,
Archbishop of Canterbury, and the two dukes, Norfolk and
Suffolk, as his godfathers. Into the chapel came the highest
dignitaries of England, ecclesiastical and lay, the clergy in
their most magnificent robes, gold-embroidered; the ladies
in gorgeous gowns of brocade and velvet in colours as rich as
those of the jewels that hung about their necks ; and the
gentlemen resplendent in doublet and hose, slashed skeves
showing gleaming white silk under-sleeves, golden chains
glittering about their shoulders, cloaks falling in rich folds to
their heels. The sunlight through the stained-glass windows
caught the lustrous colours of gown and mantle, the silver
and gold and the precious gems, making the whole brilliant
assemblage glitter and shine like an open jewel-case in the
warm light. And in the midst of it all and most gorgeous of
all, King Henry moved about, magnificent in white and gold,

HENRY'S ENGLAND

genial and charming to everyone, his pride and his satisfaction
showing in his every movement. The young princesses stood,
silent and grave; little Elizabeth watching with wide eyes,
her sister Mary, self-important as the baby's godmother,
careful and solicitous. And the queen, frail little Jane Seymour,
watched from her litter, weak and half sick, but happy that
she had given her king his wished-for heir, the little Prince
Edward. A week later she was dead, possibly of pneumonia,
contracted perhaps as she was carried on her pallet through
the draughty passages of the palace to her son's baptism.

In all the brilliant company who witnessed the young
prince's christening, no lady was more beautiful, none more
charming than the young Duchess of Suffolk. She had been
duchess for four years now, her dignity was no longer strange
to her. But it sat lightly upon her; she was gentle, gracious
and lovely, never pompous, never overbearing; she moved
easily in any company, high or humble. Shortly after the
prince's christening, John Hussee, confidential agent in
England for Lord and Lady Lisle when Lord Lisle was deputy
of Calais, wrote a letter to his mistress. He was referring to
Lady Lisle's daughter, Katherine Bassett, when he said, 'Lady
Rutland and Lady Sussex say you cannot bestow Mistress
Katherine better than with my Lady Suffolk, for the duchess
is both virtuous, wise and discreet/ At this date the duchess
was undoubtedly still the quiet young woman who thought
her own thoughts and kept her own counsel, antagonizing
no one and pleasing everyone by the beauty, charm and
kindliness that were her characteristics. But as time went on,
discretion was not an outstanding characteristic of Catherine
of Suffolk. Virtuous she certainly was, and wise and intelli-
gent. But her ready wit and quick tongue, coupled with a
keen mind which cut through externals to the heart of any

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

matter, often led her to make remarks which could scarcely
be called discreet. And before many years, her outspokenness
would be noticed, and her barbed remarks at the expense of
self-important people, people who, in another reign, would
occupy powerful positions, would be the cause of very real
peril to this high-spirited young woman.
/ Catherine of Suffolk's mother died in 1539. She died at
Grimsthorpe, where she was living with her daughter and
the duke. As the mother of the second-ranking duchess in the
kingdom, the mother-in-law of the king's favourite, it
might be expected that she would have had a formal and
ceremonial funeral, with official mourners and all the
gloomy pomp that went with such rites. But no account of
her funeral exists. There is a legend that she was buried in
Catherine of Aragon's grave in Peterborough; and the story
goes on to tell how, when the grave was opened at the end
of the nineteenth century, two bodies were discovered, both
of them recognizable, and how one of them was Lady
Willoughby. There is no support for the story in fact. The
archives of Peterborough contain no record of a second
burial in Queen Catherine's grave. Moreover, although the
grave was opened in 1884, the inner, leaden, coffin was not
disturbed and no second body was discovered. 1 Maria de
Salinas may actually have been buried in Peterborough. It
was undoubtedly her wish to be buried as near as possible to
the burial place of her beloved mistress. But all we know for
fact is that she died; and it is fair to guess that she was buried
according to the rites of the Catholic Church to which she,
like her royal mistress, had been loyal all her life.

King Henry had remained a widower for two years after
Jane Seymour's death. But in 1539 he was once more thinking
of matrimony. Earlier, Chapuys had written to the Emperor,

HENRY'S ENGLAND

'The king has been masking and visiting with the Duchess of
Suffolk.' The duke and duchess by this time spent a good deal
of time in London, either at Suffolk House or at the Barbican.
Catherine could take as active a part as she wished in Court
life; she was a popular hostess and a sought-after guest. It is
not surprising that the king, with his love of gaiety and of the
give-and-take of clever repartee, found the duke's witty and
charming wife delightful and stimulating, or that he enjoyed
'masking and visiting' with her.

The king married his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, late in
the year 1539. She came over to England from her native
country at the end of December, to be met at Canterbury by a
brilliant assembly of ladies of the Court. The Duchess of
Suffolk was the highest-ranking lady in the group, and the
duke reported Anne's reception to Thomas Cromwell,
Henry's principal minister:

The mayor and citizens of Canterbury received her
Grace with torchlight and a good deal of guns. In her
Grace's chamber were forty or fifty gentlewomen, in
velvet bonnets, to see her, all which her Grace took
very joyously.

Each lady in the welcoming party was attended by a
knight or a squire, wearing a chain of gold and dressed in a
coat or gown 'of velvet or other good stuff'. The ladies in
their jewel-coloured gowns of velvet or rich brocade, their
skirts standing out in glowing hoops over the farthingales,
their jewels sparkling in the candle-light that brightened the
dark of a grey winter day, with their attendant knights
resplendent in their gorgeous doublets and plumed hats, gave
Anne a reception fit in every way for a queen.

The marriage between Henry and Anne, for reasons which

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

need not detain us, was not a success. An amicable divorce
was arranged, and in 1540 the king married for the fifth time.
His queen was Catherine Howard, young, pretty and
Catholic.

In the summer of 1541, the king and Queen Catherine
went north on a progress. They travelled as far as York,
stopping en route to visit various members of the nobility
in their homes, where the royal pair were lavishly entertained
and where the king held meetings of his Privy Council. It
was a large and gay company that travelled through the
English countryside, the king and queen with their great
train of servants and retainers, followed by members of the
Council with theirs. The Duke of Suffolk was regular in his
attendance at meetings of the Council, but early in August he
left the progress and hastened back to Grimsthorpe, to be
ready and waiting, with his duchess, for his sovereign's visit
to them. On August 8th the royal couple and their company
rode through the gates and up to the great house of Grims-
thorpe, a house which the duke had rebuilt on a magnificent
scale in anticipation of just such a visit as this. Now the
moment had come, and the duke and duchess stood in their
doorway and watched their king and his entourage ride into
the forecourt, banners flying in the breeze, the trappings of
the horses and the gay colours of the riders' costumes bright
in the summer sunshine.

A visit from a Tudor monarch was not an unmixed bless-
ing. The honour of having his sovereign choose to make his
house a stopping place was coveted and cherished by any of
the nobility. But the cost to the host was far from insignifi-
cant. Besides the king and queen themselves, there were
ladies- and gendemen-in-waiting, servants, grooms, horses;
and Privy Councillors who did not live close by might be

HENRY'S ENGLAND

part of the company, with their wives and their servants and
horses. Only a house of magnificent size could begin to hold
them all. Then there would be feasting; music and enter-
tainment such as masques and tourneys would have to be
provided. As the first of the horsemen came clattering into
the cobbled fore-court, with harness jingling and colours
flying, the noble host waiting in his doorway must have
heard, in his mind, the jingle of gold coins tumbling out of
his pocket to pay the grocers, the vintners, the musicians and
players and all the scores of persons who would contribute to
the royal entertainment. The Duke and Duchess of Suffolk
were better able than some to provide entertainment on such
a scale, but even for them the cost was probably staggering.

More was going on at Grimsthorpe during this royal visit
than music and masques, feasting and jousting and meetings
of the Council. Catherine Howard, the beautiful young queen
of whom her husband was so proud, upon whom he literally
doted, had led a pretty promiscuous life before her marriage
to Henry. At the start of her life with the king she was very
circumspect, very careful and very eager to please her hus-
band; but by this summer of 1541, she had gone back to her
former ways. She had made Francis Dereham, one of her
former lovers, her secretary; and Thomas Culpeper, her
cousin and the most serious and ardent of all her loves, was
one of the king's gentlemen-in-waiting and was with them
on this progress. At Grimsthorpe there was a little back
staircase, and up that staircase, with the connivance of one of
Queen Catherine's ladies-in-waiting, came Culpeper for
stolen meetings with the queen.

The duke and duchess were not aware of what was going
on under their roof. Nor did the king know or dream of his
wife's infidelity. But too many people did know, and after

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

the royal pair were back at Court, the information, with
unquestionable proof, was placed in the king's hands. This
was treason, and Catherine Howard paid the penalty for
treason the next February the second of Henry's queens to
die by the executioner's axe.

Henry's sixth wife, whom he married in July of 1543, was
an old friend of the Duchess of Suffolk. She was a widow,
attractive, though not the glamorous young woman her
predecessor had been. But she was charming and virtuous,
wise and kind, intelligent and gentle; she was queenly in her
dignity and grace. She was eight years older than the duchess ;
their community of interests, their mutual concern with
matters of religion and of the new learning, had drawn them
together and made the difference in their ages of no import-
ance. Catherine of Suffolk was one of the small company of
only seventeen persons who were present in Hampton Court
chapel at the July ceremony which made Catherine Parr
Henry's wife his sixth, and last, queen. 2 The duke was away
in the north on business for the king, but even without him
at her side, the duchess was happy, happy that the king was
marrying a woman who she knew would be equal to the
task of being his consort. Her friend, she knew, would never
bore the king, she was far too intelligent for that; she would
never antagonize him, she was far too prudent; she would
care for him and for his children with love and intelligence
and tact. And Catherine Parr fulfilled all of the duchess's high
hopes and expectations.

The Duke of Suffolk died on August 22nd, 1545. The day
before his death, he had been present at a meeting of the

Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk

HENRY'S ENGLAND

Privy Council at Guildford, where the king was staying.
Charles Brandon's last illness was sudden and short, but his
duchess was at his bedside when he died, as were his two
daughters, Frances and Eleanor.

Many besides his own family mourned the duke's death.
Not the least of these was his king, who was deeply grieved.
When the death was announced in the Privy Council meet-
ing, Henry remarked that in all their long friendship the duke
had never attempted to hurt an adversary, nor had he ever
said a word to injure anyone. 'Is there any of you, my Lords/
the king added, 'who can say as much?'

In his will, the duke requested 'that my body be buried
in the college church in Tattershall ... without any pomp or
outward pride of the world, and that certain ... dirges be
done for me by all the priests of the same college and others
of my chaplains only, according to the ancient and laudable
custom of the Church of England.' But the king had other
ideas. By royal command and at the king's expense, the Duke
of Suffolk was buried in St George's chapel, Windsor, and
requiem masses were said for him at Westminster Abbey and
at St Paul's Cathedral.

Ill

THE NEW RELIGION

CATHERINE OF SUFFOLK'S life with the duke, so far as
we know, had been a happy one. While there is little
or nothing recorded about her years with her noble
husband, her own development was in itself a record. She
had become competent and easy in the complicated business
of running a large establishment, charming and gracious in
her social contacts. She was particularly noted for her wit;
Fuller described her as 'a lady of a sharp wit and sure hand to
thrust it home and make it pierce when she pleased'. 1 But she
did not use that wit at the expense of those who could not
answer her because of their lowly estate. She was never mean
or unkind. Instinctively and always, she was a great lady.

She was much more than that, however, and much more
than clever and witty and sophisticated. Behind her charming
and adept manner lay an intelligent mind, which demanded
valid reasons for everything, which never endorsed beliefs
and customs merely because they had always been accepted,
but insisted upon knowing that they were good, and why,
before adopting them. Alert and inquiring all her life, she
was always searching for the truth, and once she was con-
vinced and believed a position to be essentially right, she
never wavered in her adherence to it and her championing
of it. Intellectual and spiritual integrity was the very essence
of Catherine's character, and it governed her performance in
every problem which confronted her throughout her life.

THE NEW RELIGION

Notably it governed her attitude and actions in matters
religious. By the latter part of the 15305, she was definitely
turning towards the direction in which she was to go for the
rest of her Hfe. She was turning towards the New Religion,
the religion which not only opposed the Roman faith and
ritual, but which found even Henry's Anglican Catholicism
too much like the Roman in its confessionals and liturgy, its
mass and its veneration of saints.

The earliest outward indication of Catherine's religious
inclination showed itself in connection with appointments to
her household. Some time in the late 1530$, the Duke and
Duchess of Suffolk appointed a new private chaplain. The
man whom they chose was Alexander Seton, a Scottish friar
who had been at one time confessor to King James V of
Scotland. In about the year 1535 Seton had, in John Knox's
words, 'begun to tax the corrupt doctrine of the papacy', and
to maintain that 'the law of God had of many years not been
truly taught.' These heretical preachings had outraged the
Scottish bishops, who had accused Seton to King James;
whereupon, fearful of his king's anger, he had fled to England.
Once there, again according to Knox, he had 'taught the
evangel' for some years. During most of those years he lived
in the household of Suffolk and his duchess, as their chaplain.
In 1541 he was forced to recant. He probably did it to save his
skin, and his recantation was very likely merely a form for
him, which he went through without real conviction. He
died in the duke's house in 1542.

His successor as private chaplain to the duke and duchess
was a more heroic figure, John Parkhurst, a Surrey man by
birth and a staunch Protestant who never wavered in his
'profession of the Gospel and abhorrence of popery'. Park-
hurst lived in the Suffolk household until some time in 1543,

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

when he became domestic chaplain to Queen Catherine Parr.
He went into exile when the Catholic queen, Mary, came to
the throne. John Strype wrote of his going :

The cause of religion was so dear to him that ... he
took up a resolution to leave the kingdom, whatever
dangers and evils befell him, and piously commended
himself to the protection of God, against hangmen and
papists, putting them together as equally dealing in
blood ... And now being departed from his native
country . . . especially he had a great concern for the
princess Elizabeth and for his noble patroness, the
good duchess of Suffolk. 2

When he was not preaching the Gospel, Parkhurst appears
to have turned his hand to writing Latin verses about all and
sundry. Some of these verses were epitaphs, some were
eulogies of living men or women. The verse he wrote about
the Duchess of Suffolk was laudatory to a degree.

Aeternum salve, princeps clarissima mentis

Dotibus, eximiis ad numeranda viris
Vix did potent, quantum tribuat tibi vulgus,

Quantum magnates, docta que turba virum.
Nil tarn suspidunt homines tua stemmata clara

Insignes dotes quam, Catharina tuos.

What Parkhurst said was, 'Hail for ever, illustrious princess !
The endowments of thy mind place thee on a level with men
of the highest distinction. One can scarcely say how much all
people the common folk, nobility and men of learning
alike esteem thee, holding thee in high regard, O
Catherine, not so much for thy glorious heritage as for thy
singular talents/ 3

THE NEW RELIGION

Alexander Seton and John Parkhurst each played his part
in the spiritual development of Catherine of Suffolk. The
important fact, however, is that two such men were chosen
by the duchess and her husband to be their household chap-
lains. Pretty clearly, by the end of the decade of the 15305, the
duke and duchess were definitely sympathetic to the reformed
religion. The duke's will, dated 1544, in which he called for
'dirges ... according to the ancient and laudable custom of
the Church of England', leads one to suspect that he may have
been prepared to go less far than was his duchess. However
that might have been, Catherine and her husband did
appoint successively two men, both professed exponents of
reform, to have charge of the spiritual welfare of their house-
hold, and they did so during a period when the king's think-
ing had become most reactionary, his profession of orthodoxy
most rigid.

But it was neither Alexander Seton nor John Parkhurst
who made the initial and profound impression upon
Catherine of Suffolk's thinking, who answered the question-
ing mind and satisfied the awakening religious fervour of the
young duchess. Seton and Parkhurst were appointed after
the change had come, when Catherine knew what was the
direction of her thinking. The man who influenced her most
deeply and who was to be her spiritual guide and mentor
throughout her life even after she went into exile for her
belief and he died at the stake for his was Hugh Larimer. 4

Hugh Larimer was the son of a tenant farmer in Thur-
caston, a small hamlet just north of Leicester. He was born
about the year 1492, and in 1506 or thereabouts he went up
to Cambridge University to study for the priesthood. He
was ordained in July of 1515. From the start of his career he
was a vigorous and compelling preacher; much later it was

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

said of him that he had 'disseminated more heresies than
Luther'. During the first nine years of his priesthood, how-
ever, his very considerable talents and energy were directed
to opposing, with all the strength and eloquence at his
command, the New Learning and reformed religion at that
time being studied and discussed very widely at Cambridge.
And then, in 1524, Hugh Latimer, by that time chaplain of
the University, gave his disputation for the degree of
Bachelor of Divinity. His oration was a vehement attack
upon the reforming doctrines being preached by Philip
Melanchthon, Martin Luther's right-hand man. In the
audience that day, listening to Latimer make his address, was
Thomas Bilney, also a priest and four years Larimer's junior.
Earlier, Bilney had been converted to the New Religion by
the study of Erasmus's New Testament, which, using the
Greek text rather than the Latin, amended and revised the
traditional Vulgate, to the rage and horror of the reaction-
aries and conservatives in England. He was a man of deep
religious conviction and of great sweetness and gentleness :
later Latimer called him, affectionately, 'little Bilney'. He
listened to the oration, and after it was all over, he went to
see Latimer in his rooms. What happened there is best told
in Larimer's own words, many years later at Grimsthorpe,
Catherine of Suffolk's Lincolnshire home, in his first sermon
on the Lord's Prayer :

Here I have to tell you a story which happened at
Cambridge. Master Bilney, or rather Saint Bilney, that
suffered death for God's Word's sake, the same Bilney
was the instrument whereby God called me to know-
ledge; for I may thank him, next to God, for that
knowledge that I have in the Word of God. For I was as

THE NEW RELIGION

obstinate a papist as any was in England, insomuch that
when I should be made bachelor of divinity, my
whole oration went against Philip Melancthon and
against his opinions. Bilney heard me at that time, and
perceived that I was zealous without knowledge; and
he came to me afterwards in my study, and desired me,
for God's sake, to hear his confession. I did so; and to
say the truth, by his confession I learned more than
before in many years. So from that time forward I began
to smell the word of God, and forsook the school
doctors and such fooleries.

In such manner was Hugh Larimer's conversion begun.
From then on, he gave his whole-hearted devotion to the
study of Erasmus's Testament and of the reformed thinking,
which resulted in making him, always a forceful and
compelling preacher, into one of the foremost exponents of
the New Religion in early sixteenth-century England.

In the year following his conversion, Larimer spent as
much time as he could in Bilney's company. The two men
formed the habit of taking a daily walk together. Latimer
would come out of Clare Hall, where he lived, close by the
soaring stone laciness of the newly completed King's College
Chapel, gleaming white in the afternoon light. He would
walk along the bank of the little river Cam, meeting Bilney
at Trinity Hall, near by, and together they would stroll
under the arching trees, down the lane and across the fields
to Castle Hill on the road that led to Ely - Castle Hill, so
named after William the Conqueror's fortress-castle which
had stood there since the eleventh century. Because of
Larimer's and Bilney's love of this particular place, it came
to be known as 'Heretics' Hill', a name that stuck to it for

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

many years to come. Here the two would pace back and
forth, talking together through the afternoon hours, until
the fading light and the sudden chill of early evening would
remind them of how time had passed.

His conversion and his friendship with Thomas Bilney
were the turning points in Hugh Larimer's life. From the
first day, when Bilney came to his room, Larimer devoted all
his thought and energy, indeed all his life, to living and
preaching the pure Gospel of Christ. He was to be raised
high in the favour of King Henry and in the hierarchy of the
English Church, and, later, because of his liberal belief and
preaching, he was to be cast out by the same king. After
Henry's death, in Edward's reign, he returned to the pulpit
and preached sermons which today, four hundred years later,
are still stirring in the impact of their sincerity. And finally he
was to die for his faith, in the fire at a stake in Broad Street in
Oxford. But before that last day he had opened the way to
freedom of thought and worship, and to an understanding
and love of the Bible, to countless English men and women.

To Catherine of Suffolk, intense and thoughtful, the con-
viction of this man who had been reared, like herself, in the
Catholic faith, was profoundly moving. Like Catherine,
Latimer wasji_deeply thoughtful person; for him as for her,
religion was the^core oTHs thinking about life, and religious
beli^was for tKemHSoth a matter of conviction, profound
and unwavering, not of blind acceptance of tenets learned in
childhood.

Hugh Latimer preached for the first time in King Henry's
Court in Lent of 1530. From that time until 1539, he was a
more or less frequent preacher at Westminster. And he was
Jso called upon for special sermons, such as the funeral
sermon for Queen Jane Seymour, on occasions when a really

THE NEW RELIGION

great oration was indicated. Although he had broken from
Rome, Henry VIII was fundamentally orthodox; but this was
the time of the greatest religious freedom in his reign. It was
also the period during which Catherine Willoughby was at
her most impressionable age. It is not clear exactly when the
young duchess met the man who was to teach her so much
and influence her so deeply; however, as the devoted wife of
the king's favourite, she was with her husband at Court on
many occasions, when they both must have attended divine
service in the royal chapel and have heard Larimer preach
there. There is no doubt that the young duchess met and talked
with the dedicated preacher at that time, and began to form
the opinions and beliefs which she would hold firmly and
support actively for the rest of her life. The friendship of this
man of God and the duchess would last for the remainder of
his days; the influence of her 'father Larimer' would be a
part of Catherine of Suffolk as long as she lived, long after his
own death. And so, by the year 1539, the year when Hugh
Latimer was prohibited by King Henry from preaching in
England, Catherine and her husband were prepared to
appoint as their private chaplain a man who held the
same beliefs as those for which Latimer himself had been
silenced.

One of Larimer's most unrelenting enemies was Stephen
Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester an arch-conservative and
the leader of the opposition to the New Religion. He was a
member of Henry's Privy Council. Later on, in the reign of
Henry's son, Edward, Gardiner was deprived and thrown into
the Tower, and still later Edward's sister Mary, when she had
become queen, released him and made him her Lord Chan-
cellor. From that time on Gardiner persecuted, with un-
flagging vigour, those whom he regarded as heretics, first

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

and foremost Hugh Latimer. Catherine of Suffolk earned
Gardiner's hatred, not only because of her religion, but also
because of her wit and her readiness to make him the target
for her quick tongue. One case in point occurred some time
before 1545, on an occasion when the Duke of Suffolk and
his duchess gave a large party. As dinner time approached,
the duke asked each lady present to invite the gentleman she
liked best to take her in to dinner; whereupon the duchess
promptly walked up to Gardiner, saying, 'Since I may not
ask my Lord whom I like best, I ask your Grace whom I like
least.' Gardiner was a proud man, an unforgiving one. He
never forgot nor forgave the duchess for such an open
affront to his pride and dignity. This was only one of the
remarks which he cited against Catherine years later, when
he was seeking for evidence to prosecute her for heresy. The
proud and reactionary Gardiner, whom Catherine neither
liked nor respected, experienced her sarcasm more than once;
and though Catherine had never sought to hide behind in-
fluence and popularity, still the position of her husband in the
king's affection undoubtedly saved her, during Henry's
reign, from the retaliation which might have come to her if
she had not been the wife of the king's favourite. As it was,
retribution came, but a good deal later, and after both King
Henry VIII and the Duke of Suffolk had been a long time
dead.

Catherine of Suffolk was only about twenty-six years old
when the duke died. She was one of the executors of his will
(the others being the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley, Lord St
John and Sir Anthony Browne), and inasmuch as the duke

THE NEW RELIGION

seems to have been always short of money and in debt, she
spent many harassed hours worrying about how to satisfy
his creditors. In October of 1545, two months after Charles
Brandon's death, John Dymock, who was a sort of agent to
the duke, wrote to Wriothesley that 'My Lord's Grace owes
a great deal of money, as I will show at my coming/ It is not
clear just how the duke's debts were discharged, or when, but
apparently the duchess was able to maintain a household of
forty persons in addition to the household servants - which
she was licensed to do in May of 1546 not an inconsiderable
establishment.

The duchess did not stay in retirement for a prolonged
period after her husband's death. Three months after the
duke died, she gave a party at her house in London to
celebrate the christening of the baby daughter of John Dudley,
Lord Lisle, the Lord High Admiral of England. John Dudley
had been a great favourite of Catherine's husband, who had
himself knighted him during the French campaign in 1523.
Later, in the reign of Henry's son, Edward, Dudley would
come into great prominence as Duke of Northumberland;
now he was simply the Lord High Admiral and an old friend
of Catherine's husband and of Catherine herself. The duchess
was one of the godmothers for the Admiral's infant, and the
Princess Mary, King Henry's eldest daughter, was the other.
The godfather was Van der Delft, ambassador to England of
the Emperor Charles V of Spain. This was a happy occasion;
one reason why it was so pleasant was that it took place
during the period in Princess Mary's unhappy life when she
was more nearly a normal and happy young woman than at
any other time. Her father was then married to Catherine
Parr who, with rare sweetness and tact, had drawn Henry's
two daughters into a warm, loving family circle. Even Mary,

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

embittered as she had been in her girlhood when her father
had set her mother aside and had married, successively,
women who were at best indifferent to her welfare or happi-
ness, could not but respond to the warmth and affection of
Catherine Parr. Of all her accomplishments in making the
life of the irascible old king happy and serene, far from the
least achievement of Henry's last queen was that she made
both Mary and Elizabeth Tudor feel loved and wanted.
There is an interesting entry at about this time in the privy
purse expenditures of the Princess Mary. It reads, 'Delivered
to my Lady's Grace to play at cards with my Lady of
Suffolk, 235. 8d.' 3 This tiny entry reveals quite a different
Mary from the more familiar, dour, stern and unhappy one.
She and Catherine of Suffolk had never been close friends,
although there was only four years' difference in their ages.
And later on there would be real antagonism between them
because of religion. But at just this time it seems clear that the
princess was reaching out for companionship and finding
some pleasure in the company of the duchess.

Catherine of Suffolk and Catherine Parr, however, were
always very close friends. But gentle as she was, and tactful
and discreet, Queen Catherine was not without enemies who
sought to discredit her and to undermine her position. In
February of 1546, Van der Delft told the Emperor that 1
hesitate to report there are rumours of a new queen ...
Madame Suffolk is much talked about, and is in great favour,
but the king shows no alteration in his behaviour to the
queen.' This is the only suggestion that I have seen that the
duchess was ever considered as a bride for Henry. The story
was undoubtedly made up, with no foundation whatever in
fact, by ardent Catholics who, perhaps because they realized
how sympathetic the queen was to the reformed religion,

THE NEW RELIGION

were seeking for stories to circulate against her. A month
earlier, Chapuys had written to Mary of Hungary, * ... the
King favours these stirrers of heresy, the Earl of Hertford and
Lord Admiral, which is to be feared ... because the queen,
instigated by the Duchess of Suffolk, Countess of Hertford
and the Admiral's wife, shows herself infected/ And men
much closer to the king than the emperor's ambassador, the
Lord Chancellor Wriothesley for one, and Gardiner also, did
their best to discredit his queen in Henry's eyes. They did not
succeed, nor did they succeed and they were probably
trying to do so in breaking up the close friendship between
Catherine Parr and Catherine of Suffolk. As for Catherine of
Suffolk, the king for a long time had found her congenial and
good company, and there is no doubt that because of her
friendship with the queen, the duchess spent a considerable
amount of time at the royal Court, where Henry as well as
his wife enjoyed her presence.

The duchess, a beautiful and well-to-do young widow, was
naturally the subject of various speculations. One story
about her was to the effect that, upon failing to get the
Princess Mary as a bride, the King of Poland had tried to
marry her. This was not a surprising story, whether true or
not; and it would not have been strange if, on his visit to
England, the Polish King had made overtures to the lovely
young duchess ; he may well have done so. But Catherine of
Suffolk never seriously entertained the idea of becoming
Queen of Poland, or queen anywhere else for that matter.

In the autumn of 1546, Henry's reign, with his life, was
drawing towards its close. The people were beginning to

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

realize the fact, and were looking ahead with some concern.
A boy of barely ten years would ascend the throne, but who
would rule England? Would it be the reformers, men like
Hertford and Cranmer, or would it be the reactionaries like
Gardiner and Wriothesley ? All of these men were high in the
confidence of the old king; who, the people wondered,
would rule over England until the boy king would be old
enough to rule for himself?

Henry had realized that he could not live until his son was
old enough to take his full place, and he had given much
thought to the business of providing a government for his
boy's minority. The Council of Regency which he appointed
numbered sixteen, and he named conservatives and liberals,
Catholics and Protestants, to the group. Edward Seymour,
the young king's uncle, was named, and John Dudley, by
now Earl of Warwick; Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of
Canterbury, was one of the Council, as was William Parr,
Queen Catherine's brother. Henry's Lord Chancellor,
Wriothesley, a Catholic and hater of heretics, was the out-
standing Catholic in the group. The most notable omission
was Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and leader of
the reactionary wing in Henry's own Privy Council, who
was not named by the king.

Henry may have thought that he was naming a Council of
Regency in which the balance between liberal and conserva-
tive was fairly even. But it quickly appeared that the strong
men were men of liberal leanings, particularly in matters
religious. Moreover, Edward's three tutors, all of them men
of great learning, were also all men of known liberal sym-
pathies. It is easy to be wise after the event. However, one
cannot but wonder whether, in his last weeks and months,
with death staring him in the face, Henry actually realized

THE NEW RELIGION

the inevitability of change in a more liberal direction, and
tried to provide for that change.

Henry VIII died on January 28th, 1547, and on February
20th the boy king, Edward VI, was crowned in Westminster
Abbey. Henry Brandon, the young Duke of Suffolk,
Catherine's son, carried the orb in the coronation procession,
and both he and his younger brother Charles were among
those made Knights of the Bath in the coronation honours.

And the young king's uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of
Hertford, became Duke of Somerset, and was fast on his way
to becoming Lord Protector and the most powerful man in
all England.

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND
SOMERSET

yt FTER the ceremonies of Edward VTs coronation were
L\ over, the Duchess of Suffolk returned to her beloved
JL JL Grimsthorpe, leaving behind her the Court with its
bustle and excitement, its intrigues and strivings for position,
to go back to the quiet countryside she loved. With all
Catherine's social ease and sophistication, she was a child of
the country, and although she always maintained a house in
London, it was Grimsthorpe which she regarded as home. It
was not far from the little town of Bourne, a little to the
north-west of it; and while the country south of Bourne was
flat and uneventful, the hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds began
to rise quite suddenly just north of the town. The great
house of Grimsthorpe stood on a rise, looking over the fold-
ing hills in all directions. A majestic house, it was built in the
form of a square, of warm, grey stone, a tower rising at each
corner and a grass area in the centre. Chimneys reached high
above the slate roof, and leaded casements opened out over
lawn and garden. There were fragrant herb beds; and there
were borders of gaily coloured flowers, and lovely rose
gardens with paths edged by low clipped yew, where
Catherine loved to walk in the sunshine of a summer day or,
wrapped in a long cloak, in the frequent gentle rain. The
windows of her bedroom looked out over the rose gardens,
their pink and crimson beauty was the first thing to greet her

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

eyes when she looked out in the morning, and she went
to sleep at night breathing deep of their fragrance. To
the west of the house, just below the lawn, stretched a great
meadow, where horses grazed and drank the clear water of
the stream that wandered through the lush grass. And beyond
the meadow stretched the deer park, acres of tall trees,
towering oak and ash and beech, and wide-spreading chest-
nuts. Catherine loved the house and the vast rolling acres,
and she loved her life there, busy but peaceful, with time for
thought and contemplation, so different from the harassed
and cautious existence at Court.

The maintenance of her large establishment was no small
task, and Catherine was far from idle. She had been licensed
to retain forty persons in her livery besides household ser-
vants, but the number of servants in the household probably
almost doubled that number, stewards, cooks, footmen,
maidservants; they all came under her direction, and their
welfare was her responsibility. And then the lands themselves,
acre upon rolling acre; all had to be tended, planted and
harvested, and the young duchess had to direct the work and
see to it that it was well and effectively done. It was a sizeable
job for a woman alone, but Catherine had learned her lessons
well, first from the French Queen who had taught her all a
young girl should know about running a house, and then
from twelve years as the wife of a mature, experienced man.
She ran her establishment smoothly and happily.

Of all her responsibilities, the primary one and the one
which gave her the greatest happiness and satisfaction was the
welfare and education of her two sons. All that she did
related to them, the care of her estates which would one day
belong to them, her interest in the county, which was their
county as well, and her care of their own health, in body and

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

in mind. The wardship of Henry, the young Duke of Suffolk,
had been awarded to Catherine in May of 1546. She left him
at Court after King Edward's coronation, to be a companion
to the boy king and to be tutored with him, but she was in
touch with him and always knew how he was and how his
education was progressing. Little Charles went back to
Grimsthorpe, where he was taught by tutors, under his
mother's supervision.

The direction of her large menage and the care of her sons'
upbringing were quite enough in themselves to fill the days
of the average woman of Catherine's time. But Catherine was
not a typical woman of her time. She did not find it necessary
to spend long hours resting, or being made beautiful by
hairdressers and waiting-maids as did so many ladies in her
position in the sixteenth century. Nature had been very kind
to Catherine of Suffolk. With her own natural beauty she
needed little outside help to make her lovely to look upon;
moreover, her active mind and body gave to beautiful
features alertness and mobility. Her days were full of activity
in outside matters which she believed to be important. Chief
among these were matters of religion, the strengthening of
Protestantism and the denunciation of popery. She started
her work for religious reform in her own county as soon as
she had got home to Grimsthorpe from Edward's coronation.
In describing the work of the Reformation at that time, the
historian John Strype remarked that it was greatly advanced
'by the helping forwardness of that devout woman of God,
the duchess of Suffolk'. It was written of her also that

she was very active in seconding the efforts of govern-
ment to abolish superfluous Holy Days, to remove
images and relics from churches, to destroy shrines and

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

other monuments of idolatry and superstition, to put an
end to pilgrimages, to reform the clergy, to see that
every church had provided, in some convenient place,
a copy of the large Bible, to stir up the bishops, vicars
and curates to diligence in preaching against the usurped
authority of the Pope ; in inculcating upon all the reading
of the Scriptures, and especially the young, the Pater
Noster, the Articles of Faith and the Ten Command-
ments in English.

This was the essence of Catherine's religion, which she
was sharing so actively with the people of her county, to
bring the Word and the love of God to the people with
whom she came in contact, to make it simple and under-
standable. She was little concerned with theological problems
per se; what mattered to her was her belief that no artificial
barrier should stand between men and women and their God.
The mass, the Latin service, the elaborate vestments, the
shrines and monuments, all these were to her as it were
screens that divided God from man. In the Catholic Church,
she believed, the symbols had grown so important that they
had taken the place of the essence. What really mattered to
Catherine of Suffolk, all that really mattered, was God and
His Word; and anything which came between God and His
people, either in ritual or in church government, should be
abolished. Quite simply, that was what she stood for and
worked for all the rest of her life. No matter what difficulties
came into her path, she never wavered in her belief or in her
zeal to promote the religion which meant so much to her.

A Lincolnshire neighbour and one of the closest friends of

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

the duchess was William Cecil. Cecil was a year or so younger
than Catherine. He had been born in the little town of
Bourne, and educated at the Grantham Grammar School and
at St John's College, Cambridge. His parental home,
Burghley House, which he himself later enlarged and made
into a great mansion, was at Stamford Baron. The little river
Welland, dividing Lincolnshire from Northamptonshire,
flows through the town of Stamford, and Burghley House
stood about a mile south of the river in the county of
Northampton, perhaps twenty miles south of Grimsthorpe.
Cecil and the duchess had been neighbourly acquaintances
for a number of years. From 1547 for the rest of her life he
was her staunch friend and adviser. Whenever she had a
problem in which she needed help or advice, she turned to
him, and he always gave her his best counsel; and sometimes
he in turn would ask her to use her ready wit and facile
tongue in situations where he thought she might be helpful.
Cecil entered the service of the Lord Protector Somerset in
the year 1547. Thus began the service of his government
and his country to which he was to devote the rest of his life,
in which he was to rise to greatest heights as the principal
minister of the great queen, Elizabeth Tudor, some years
later. Fundamentally Cecil, like Catherine, was Protestant in
his belief and his sympathies. But he was far more circum-
spect than his friend the duchess, more careful of what he
said and how he said it. Later on, particularly in Elizabeth's
reign, he was very careful never to push his royal mistress
further or faster than she was prepared to go in the direction
of Protestantism. He knew the Tudors, knew their greatness
and also their stubbornness, and he recognized the fact that
excessive advocacy of the Protestant position might very well
do more harm than good to the cause of religious reform

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

with a sovereign who, although she was Protestant, was at the
same time much more in accord with the orthodox forms of
worship than with the less ritualistic pattern being pushed by
the zealots. Catherine of Suffolk never understood her
friend's position in this matter. To her it was expediency,
pure and simple, and she scolded Cecil for it and told him
what she thought of him in no measured terms whenever the
opportunity arose to do so. Catherine was a fighting zealot,
while William Cecil was a politique. It was difficult, always,
for the zealot to understand the politique; but her affection for
him and her loyalty to him never wavered, nor his for her.
And she never doubted, nor had she ever reason to doubt,
that he would give his help in any matter, whenever she asked
for it, no matter how busy he might be with affairs of state.

In November of 1547, the November after Edward's
accession to the throne, a little pamphlet, written by Queen
Catherine Parr, was published in London. It was a small
pamphlet with a long title: 'The Lamentations of a Sinner,
Made by the Most Virtuous Lady Queen Catherine, Be-
wailing the Ignorance of her Blind Life, Set Forth and Put in
Print at the Instant Desire of the Right Gracious Lady Cather-
ine, duchess of Suffolk and the Earnest Request of the Right
Honourable Lord, William Parr, Marquess of Northampton
[Catherine Parr's brother]. 5 William Cecil wrote the intro-
duction for the pamphlet, a rather cautious introduction, but
it established beyond question the fact that his sympathies,
however prudently expressed, lay with the reformers.

Interest in religious reform was becoming widespread in
the period immediately following King Henry VIII's death,
and popular demand for Catherine Parr's pamphlet was
great enough to make a second edition necessary in March of
1548. The booklet was a fairly discreet little essay, written as

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

it was by the queen of an orthodox king, and actually written
during his lifetime even though it was not published until
after his death. It left no doubt in anyone's mind that its
author, as well as those who were associated in its publication,
were all firm believers in the reformed religion, the pure
Gospel of Christ as they saw it.

The reform movement was growing in a sympathetic
atmosphere in the days of Edward VT s reign. Edward
Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, who was
an old friend of the Duchess of Suffolk's, was a strong
supporter of the New Religion, as were most of the Council
who really counted. The boy king himself, by birth, inclina-
tion and education, leaned definitely to the Protestant posi-
tion. He was only a boy, to be sure, but he was intelligent
beyond his years, and he was the anointed King of England,
and the fact that his support was given freely and not under
pressure from his councillors was a source of great satisfaction
and strength to the reformers. During the latter part of King
Henry's reign, when the king was so rigid in his orthodoxy,
they had had to be very careful not to incur the royal dis-
pleasure or to risk retaliation from the reactionaries who
occupied high positions in the king's confidence and trust.
Of all the spiritual leaders of reform, Cranmer alone had
continued to enjoy freedom and the loyal support of his
king. Henry never forgot the part Cranmer had played in
his divorce of Catherine of Aragon; and so, during the latter
part of the reign, Cranmer was able to do, and did do, as
much as anyone could to keep the forces of reaction at least
in check, and he could do so because he was always careful
not to overstep the thin line that lay between the king's
favour and the king's wrath. Cranmer was not the most
heroic of the reformers, but the reform movement owed much

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

to his wisdom and astuteness. Moreover, he left behind
when he finally died for his faith, a legacy for which English-
speaking men and women must always be grateful to him
a service of worship in the English language so beautiful that
it is used today, not only by the Anglican communion but
also by people of all Protestant faiths who want to worship
their God in words of ineffable beauty and clarity.

Only a few weeks after King Henry's death, his widow
married Sir Thomas Seymour, newly created Baron Seymour
of Sudeley, the brother of the Lord Protector. She had been
in love with him before she married Henry, but had given
him up to become a loyal and helpful wife to the king.
Catherine of Suffolk was one of the few who knew from the
start about her old friend's marriage, which was kept a
carefully-guarded secret for as long as possible. It was not
possible very long. On August 20th, 1548, a baby girl was
born to Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour, and eight
days later the queen died of puerperal fever. Not long after-
wards, Lord Seymour was put in the Tower attainted of
treason, and on March 2Oth, 1549, the day his baby was
seven months old, he was executed. His dying request was
that his infant daughter, Mary, should be brought up by the
Duchess of Suffolk, and the child, with her nurse, was taken
to Grimsthorpe from Syon House, where she had been in the
care of her uncle, the Lord Protector Somerset. According to
John Strype, Somerset had promised that a pension should be
settled upon the baby, and that plate and furnishings belong-
ing to her nursery should be sent to Grimsthorpe for her use.
But neither was forthcoming, and the whole burden of her

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

maintenance fell upon the duchess. In spite of her many
protestations of poverty, the duchess was fairly affluent; in
lands, particularly, she was well-to-do. But her own respon-
sibilities, her sons and her large establishment, put a heavy
drain upon Catherine of Suffolk's resources, and the added
burden of little Mary Seymour was the last straw. In July,
1549, she wrote a letter about it to William Cecil, now in
Somerset's service:

I have so wearied myself with the letters that I have
written at this present to my Lord's Grace and to my
Lady, that there is not so much as one line could be
spared for Cecil. But by that time I have made you the
amends, you will be well pleased by another line ; you
shall have letters when they get none. That is to say, I
will trouble you when I will not trouble them. So I
trow you may hold you well repayed. In these my
letters to my Lady, I do put her in remembrance for the
performance of the promise touching some annual pen-
sion for the finding of the late queen's child; for now she
with a dozen persons lyeth all together at my charge,
the continuance whereof will not bring me out of debt
this year. My Lord Marquis Northampton, to whom I
[page torn] deliver her, hath as weak a back for such a
burden as I have. And he would receive her but more
willingly if he might receive her with the appurtenances.
Thus groweth matters; you must help us beggars and I
pray you that you may. And then will we cease our
importunities. But never a word that you are required
by me. So fare you heartily well, with my commenda-
tions to your wife. 1

In August, Catherine wrote a second letter to Cecil.

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

Apparently the plate and furnishings for the baby's nursery
had come to her, but no allowance, so that the expenses of
her maintenance and the maintenance and wages of her
governess, her nurse and other servants all fell upon the
duchess, who found it next to impossible to discharge the
financial burden and begged Cecil, once more, to try to get
the allowance or pension.

There is no record of whether or not any allowance for the
child was forthcoming, or of what finally became of her.
Lady Cecilie Goff says that apparently no funds ever came,
and that she later married and had one daughter. John Strype
says that funds were provided, but that she died shortly
afterwards. Whatever happened, the duchess appears to have
complained of her no further.

Meanwhile, by the autumn of 1549, all was not well with
Somerset and his position in the Council of Regency. In the
summer of that year, a rebellion had taken place in Norfolk,
led by one Robert Ket, one of the local gentry. It was a
rebellion chiefly against the enclosure movement, the move-
ment to fence in arable land and make it into pastures for
sheep-raising. It was a lucrative venture for the landowners,
but it displaced the tenant farmers, depriving them of homes
and work and their very subsistence. Somerset put down the
rebellion, although actually he was hostile towards the
enclosing landlords and sympathetic to the position of the
rebels; and he did try his best to enforce laws against en-
closures. It is not clear how the Duchess of Suffolk felt about
the rebellion, or about the enclosure movement. Apparently,
in a very small way, she profited from the uprising; in
October of 1550, writing to Cecil to congratulate him upon
his new appointment as Secretary to the Earl of Warwick,
she remarked:

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

I am content to become your partner ... and I will abide
all adventures in your ship, be the weather fair or foul;
and although I cannot help you with costly wares ...
yet I shall ply you with my woollen stuffs which may
serve her for ballast. If you marvel how that I am
become so cunning in ship works, you shall understand
that I am about the making of one here by me at
Boston's, or rather the patching of an old one, which
gentle recompense I had for my wines, wherewith the
Honour victualled the rebels in Norfolk the last year, so
that I am now become a merchant vintner. 2

Hugh Larimer was outspokenly sympathetic with the
rebels, and said as much in a sermon before Edward VI :

The covetousness of the gentry appeared as in raising
their rents, so in oppressing the poorer sort by en-
closures, thereby taking away their lands, where they had
served their forefathers, to feed their cattle for the
subsistence of their families, which was such an oppres-
sion that it caused them to break out into a rebellion in
the year I549. 3

But the cards were stacked against the little folk, the
yeomen farmers, and they were stacked against Somerset.
The two strongest men in the Council were Somerset and
John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. Somerset was the people's
friend; Warwick was the friend of the rich and powerful
landlord group. He was a far less admirable man than
was Somerset, but he had wealth behind him, and the rich
landowners, and he had the power that derives from wealth
and backing. In October, 1549, Somerset was forced to resign
his office, and Warwick became head of the government.

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

Somerset was put in the Tower for a time, but then he was
released to sit again at the Council table. By that time, how-
ever, he was actively conspiring against Warwick, and, as a
result of his activities, the government was in danger of
splitting. The position was an impossible one. Even Somer-
set's friends realized that it was impossible, and they were
trying their best to get him to see that his active opposition
to Warwick could only end in disaster. But they were un-
successful, and in the end Somerset was to pay for his
actions with his life.

Somerset and the duchess were old friends; and Catherine
was also a friend to Warwick, her husband's old favourite.
Early in 1550, after Somerset's first imprisonment in the
Tower, William Cecil, who was trying his best to straighten
matters out and dispel the enmity between the two men,
wrote to Catherine asking her to come up to Court and try
what she could do. Cecil evidently thought that, as a friend
to both men, and with her ready wit and facile tongue, she
might be able to help resolve the difficulties. But Catherine
thought otherwise. She wrote to Cecil on March 25th:

The matter between the council and my Lord and the
state of hh cause, seemeth by your letter not to differ
from that which before I heard. But of my greater fear
you have quieted me ... Wherefore I trust my journey
will be less needful, for the great good I could have
done for my Lord was to have offered my counsel ...
If I might be anyways persuaded that I might do my
Lord any good I would gladly put myself in, any
venture for him. But alas, if I come and am not able to
do for him that I would ... then shall I not only do him
no good but rather harm ... I will bethink me how I can

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

master that froward and crooked mind of mine before
I come, and if I can bring that to pass then will I not fail
with speed to accomplish your desire and mine. 4

Although the duchess did not go to Westminster to
intercede on Somerset's behalf, Somerset, if he knew of her
reluctance to come, was not antagonized by it. Only two
months later, in May of 1550, he wanted to negotiate a
marriage contract between his daughter, the Lady Anne
Seymour, and the young Duke of Suffolk, then a boy of
fifteen, Catherine's eldest son. Almost any sixteenth-century
parent would have jumped at the proposal. But Catherine of
Suffolk was not such a one; she was no more bound by
custom and convention in her attitude towards marriage
than in her attitude towards any other part of life which she
regarded as important. She declined the offer, at least for the
time being, and then, as she so often did when confronted
with a problem, she turned to William Cecil:

... I trust the friendship between my Lord Somerset and
me hath been tried such, and hath so good assurance
upon the simple respects of our only good wills, that we
shall not need to do anything rashly or unorderly to
make the world to believe better of our friendships and
for the one of us to think well of the other. No unadvised
bonds between a boy and girl can give such assurance
of good will as hath been tried already. And now they,
marrying by our orders and without their consents,
as they be yet without judgement to give such consent
as ought to be given in matrimony, I cannot tell what
more unkindness one of us might show another, or
wherein we might work more wickedly than to bring
our children into so miserable a state not to choose by

EDWARD VI, WILLIAM CECIL AND SOMERSET

their own liking ... This I promise you I have said for
my Lord's daughter as well as for my son, and this more
I say for myself and say it not but truly : I know none
this day living that I rather wish my son than she, but I
am not, because I like her best, therefore desirous that
she should be constrained by her friends to have him
whom she might peradventure not like so well as I like
her; neither can I yet assure myself of my son's liking ...
But to have this matter come best to pass were that we
parents kept still our friendship, and suffer our children
to follow our examples and to begin their loves of
themselves without our forcing ... and so I doubt not
but if God do not mislike it, my son and his daughter
shall much better like it to make up the matter them-
selves, and let them even alone with it, saying there can
no good agreement happen between them that we shall
mislike, and if it should not happen well there is neither
they nor none of us shall blame another. And so my good
Cecil, being weary, I leave you to the Lord. From
Kingston, the 9th of May. 5

This was a very surprising letter from a sixteenth-century
parent, particularly from a widow with two sons, who might
be expected to welcome without question the opportunity for
an important and influential marriage for one of those sons.
It is a clear indication of how the duchess felt about marriage.
At a time when arranged marriages were customary she
would not lend herself to making such an arrangement for
one of her children, no matter how flattering the offer or
how desirable the arrangement might seem to be.

Somerset did not agree with the duchess about waiting to
see how the young people felt. In a little over a year, Lady

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Anne Seymour was married to the young Lord Lisle, the
eldest son of the Earl of Warwick, now Duke of Northum-
berland. And in the following October Somerset was once
more arrested, by his own daughter's father-in-law, was tried
for treason, convicted and beheaded.

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

DURING all this time the education of Catherine's two
sons had been progressing in a brilliantly promising
manner. In the autumn of 1549, the two boys had
entered St John's College, Cambridge. Young Henry was
then fourteen, his brother Charles a year or so younger. Quite
probably William Cecil had something to do with the
duchess's choice of a college for her boys; St John's was his
old college. It was the college associated with such men as
Sir John Cheke, the great Greek lecturer and one of the
tutors of Edward VI; with Roger Ascham, tutor to the
Princess Elizabeth; with Walter Haddon, lecturer on Civil
Law; all of them men of profound learning and liberal
sympathies. In 1535, when Cecil was a student there, St
John's was regarded as one of the outstanding colleges in the
University of Cambridge, and it held the same high place
in the regard of men of learning when the Brandon brothers
went up.

Their tutor was Doctor Thomas Wilson. In 1553 Wilson
published the Arte of Rhetorique, one of the earliest books on
literary style in the English language; and still later he became
one of Queen Elizabeth's principal secretaries. At this time he
was a brilliant tutor, who immediately recognized the
qualities of mind and character of his two noble students,
who stood out so much above the average in scholarship and
responsiveness.

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

The students lived a rigorous life in the college. Rising
between four and five in the morning, they spent the hour
from five to six in chapel, after which, until ten o'clock, they
either studied with their tutor or attended university lectures.
At ten o'clock they had a rather dull dinner, consisting usually
of a piece of beef, soup and oatmeal. After dinner they would
again devote themselves to their studies until five o'clock,
when a supper, not unlike the dinner, was served. The
evenings were given over to discussions, in Latin of course,
or to studies, until nine o'clock when they would go to bed.
There was no heat in the buildings where the students lived,
and often they would have to run up and down for half an
hour or so, before bedtime, in order to get their feet warm.

It was not an easy life, but it was the normal life for students
at the time, so it was accepted with no more objection than
that which any boy in any age might raise, about the food
being not as good as that at home; about lack of free time,
lack of comfort and the like. We hear nothing of sports in
connection with the Brandon boys, nothing about dramatics,
or any of what we call today extra-curricular activities. All
that we know is that they were boys of singularly lovely
character, and of unusual knowledge and ability in learning;
boys who worked hard and did extremely well in their
pursuit of education. And although they lived such a stark
and rigorous life, their apparel, at least, was gay and rich. In
an inventory dated 1551, among the clothing listed as
belonging to Henry, the young Duke of Suffolk, are such
items as *a black velvet gown furred with sables ... a pair of
crimson velvet hose ... a nightgown of black damask furred
with conie...a velvet cap with fourteen diamonds and
another with fourteen rubies,' and so forth; and Charles
Brandon had *a suit of crimson satin embroidered with

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

silver, given to the duchess by the King, with buttons of
gold; a nightgown of grogram furred with jennet ...a
taffeta hat with a brooch.' 1

When her sons went to St John's College, the duchess took
a house in Kingston, a little village five or six miles to the
west of Cambridge, in order to be near them. One of her
earliest happy acts there was to welcome to Cambridge the
great German theologian, Martin Bucer. The contacts
between the English and continental reformers had been close
all along and Bucer had been in touch, by letter, with Thomas
Cranmer, who had invited him to come to England and had
been instrumental in getting him appointed Regius Professor
of Divinity at Cambridge. Some time earlier, and also due to
Cranmer's influence, the regius professorship of divinity at
Oxford had been conferred upon Peter Martyr, one of
Bucer's close friends and, like him, a great reformer. Bucer
arrived in Cambridge in November of 1549, and the next
January he opened a course on St Paul's Epistle to the
Ephesians. Henry and Charles Brandon studied with Martin
Bucer, and their mother attended many of his lectures, and
became a devoted friend to him as well, and to his wife and
children, who joined him in Cambridge before the winter
was over. Their friendship, although it turned out to be of
very short duration, was a source of profound pleasure to
Catherine of Suffolk, and brought great happiness to Bucer
himself Catherine was young, intelligent and eager-minded;
he was thirty years older than she, in failing health but never
in failing mental and spiritual vigour. He found in her an
absorbed listener, an understanding questioner and an apt
student of the reformed religion of which he was such a
learned and brilliant exponent. All that was in her power the
duchess did for her friend's comfort. She gave him a cow and

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

a calf for himself and his family, among other things, and
towards the end, when he was sick and dying, she helped to
nurse him and did everything she could to ease his suffering
and to help his wife.

Martin Bucer died on February 27th, 1551, only a little
over a year from the day he had arrived in Cambridge. He
was buried in Great St Mary's church in the town, and such
had been the sweetness of his character, as well as the bril-
liance of his mind, that the entire town, university officials and
students and townsfolk too, mourned him and attended his
funeral some three thousand persons all told. His death
was a great personal grief to the duchess. She had known him
for less than two years, but she had loved him for his gentle-
ness and understanding, and for the integrity of his mind and
spirit.

Sad as she was at the loss of Martin Bucer, a much greater
grief was in store for Catherine in that tragic year of 1551.
Early in the summer, before the end of the Cambridge term,
the dread sweating sickness broke out in England and struck
the university town. The great sixteenth-century French
surgeon, Ambrose Pare, described the sweating sickness as
*a catarrhe with difficulty of breathing and a straitness of the
heart and lungs', which would suddenly strike a city, attacking
as many as two or three hundred in a day, killing most of
them, and then pass on as suddenly as it had come. The des-
cription of it given by the English physician, John Caius, was
more picturesque in a macabre way. In 1552, Caius wrote A
Boke or Counceill against the Disease commonly called the
Sweate, or Sweating Sickness, in which he said that it

immediately killed some in opening their windows,
some in playing with children in street doors, some in

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

one hour, many in two it destroyed, and at the longest,
to them that merrily dined it gave a sorrowful supper.
As it found them so it took them, some in sleep, some in
wake, some in mirth, some in care, some fasting and
some full ... if the half in every town escaped it was
thought great favour. 2

This was the disease which struck Cambridge in July of
1551, a disease for which there was no known cure, from
which there was no hope of recovery. When it invaded the
university town, Henry and Charles Brandon were promptly
removed from their college and were taken to Buckden
the same Buckden which had been the home for a time of
Catherine of Aragon where they were warmly received
by a kinswoman of theirs, Lady Margaret Neville, who
welcomed them affectionately. But the two boys were
strangely sad, particularly the young Duke of Suffolk. In
the middle of the evening meal, he looked gloomily at Lady
Margaret and said,

'Where shall we sup tomorrow night?'

Lady Margaret was startled. 'With me, I trust, or at least
with one equally well known to you/ she answered.

'No/ said Henry Brandon, 'never shall we sup together
again/

Almost immediately the boy was stricken with the disease,
and within the next few hours he died. His brother Charles
lay ill in another room. Opening his eyes suddenly, he looked
up at the doctor who was attending him and said that it was
very sad to be bereaved of a dear one.

'Why do you say that?' asked the physician.

'My brother is dead/ answered Charles, 'but no matter,
for I will go straight after him/

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Inside an hour, and in spite of all the doctor's efforts to
relieve him, Charles Brandon, too, was dead.

The duchess was unwell in her house at Kingston when the
news reached her that her sons had been moved away from
Cambridge. She rose instantly from her bed and followed
them to Buckden, arriving there to find Henry dead and
Charles dying. The courageous and resourceful young
woman who had never hesitated to face any difficulty, how-
ever great, was prostrate with grief. Everything she had
stood for, everything she had fought for was secondary to
her devotion to her two boys, her concern over their present
welfare, her hopes and dreams for their future. Dazed and
stunned, she knew simply that the very centre of her life, her
reason for existence, was gone from her, leaving a vacuum
behind. She did not know, did not even care, what was the
nature of the terrible disease which had swept over Cam-
bridge and taken her boys from her. All that her numbed
mind could grasp was that they were gone. They had been
taken away from the university as quickly as possible, in the
desperate hope that the contagion had not reached them and
that they might be spared. Catherine had been told of their
departure immediately, and had rushed to follow them, to be
with them at Buckden, to care for them if need be; she had
arrived to find nothing. Tragedy stared her in the face and
she stared back, blindly. Normally the duchess was fond of
people, but now no one could help her, no one could even
reach her to try to comfort her. There were decisions to be
made which only she could make, questions which only she
could answer, about funeral ceremonies and burial. But when
her friends, helpfully and lovingly, came to her to ask her
what she wished to have done, she seemed not even to hear
them. And so the brothers were buried at Buckden, quietly

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

and privately. Later on, when Catherine was once again
mistress of herself, eulogies were made, and epitaphs in
keeping with the position and the rare promise of these gifted
children. But for the time being, Catherine cared for nothing
and could decide nothing.

The duchess left Buckden, that house of tragedy ; and she
left her little house in Kingston, and the University of
Cambridge, where her hopes had been so high, the future
had seemed so glowing. She went home to Grimsthorpe, to
the seclusion of her own house and her own garden, where
she had brought up her sons and watched them play as little
boys. The days went by slowly, the hours from dawn to
evening seemed interminable as she walked alone through
the silent house that had once, such a short time ago, been
full of laughter and play. She might have gone somewhere
else, have plunged herself into a life of activity in an effort to
forget her grief. But here in Grimsthorpe was where
Catherine knew she had to find herself, quietly and prayer-
fully, to discover whether her belief and her faith could and
would sustain her, to build her life anew upon its shattered
ruin. And she did just that. Alone in the quiet of her home,
full of the memories of her adored sons, her courage reasserted
itself as her belief and trust in God came back to her. By
September she was reaching out for the comfort and under-
standing of her close friends. On the yth, she wrote to
William Cecil:

I give God thanks, good Master Cecil, for all His
benefits which it hath pleased him to heap upon me;
and truly I take this last (and to the first sight most sharp
and bitter) punishment not for the least of His benefits,
inasmuch as I have never been so well taught by any

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

other before to know His power, His love and mercy,
mine own weakness and that wretched state that with-
out Him I should endure here. And to ascertain you that
I have received great comfort in Him, I would gladly
do it by talk and sight of you. But as I must confess
myself no better than flesh, so I am not well able with
quiet to behold my very friends without some part of
these vile dregs of Adam to seem sorry for that whereof
I know I rather ought to rejoice. Yet notwithstanding
I would not spare my sorrow so much but I would gladly
endure it were it not for other causes that moveth me so
to do, which I leave unwritten at this time ... if it please
you, you may use him that I send you as if I stood by.
So with many thanks for your lasting friendship, I
betake you to Him that both can and I trust will govern
you to His glory and your best contentation. 3

With the death of the two Brandon boys, the dukedom of
Suffolk had become extinct in the male line. Their half-
sister, Frances Brandon, the eldest daughter of their father
and the French Queen, stood next in line. On October 4th,
1551, King Edward conferred the dukedom upon Frances's
husband, Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, at the same
ceremony at which the Earl of Warwick was created Duke of
Northumberland and William Cecil was knighted.

The properties which had come to Charles Brandon and his
heirs male, by grant from King Henry VIII, had reverted to
the Crown. Vaudey Abbey, an old Cistercian monastery
which had been dissolved in 1533, and Edenham and Scotel-
thorpe, had all been granted to the duke and Catherine

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

jointly, therefore they continued as her property. They lay
close by Grimsthorpe and had become a part of it. Tattershall
Castle, in Lincolnshire, went back to the Crown, but Eresby,
not far from Tattershall, belonged to Catherine, like Grims-
thorpe, as part of her inheritance from her father. So the
duchess still owned enough land to keep her very busy and
to bring her an income. She stayed at Grimsthorpe quietly
through the autumn of 1551, but by Christmas she apparently
felt more like mingling with people, and she spent the
holidays with her stepdaughter, Frances, and her husband and
three young daughters. The eldest of these daughters, the
Lady Jane Grey, was then a girl of fourteen, only slightly
younger than Catherine's own two boys who had, of course,
been her uncles, being half-brothers to her mother. Jane
must have been a comfort to Catherine of Suffolk. She was a
singularly sweet, gentle girl, with great beauty both of body
and of mind. She was reputed to be one of the most studious
and learned young women in England: men like John Ayl-
mer, her tutor, and Roger Ascham were constantly amazed at
the clear and lucid quality of her mind and by her aptness in
learning. The duchess, missing her own two sons so sorely,
found a poignant kind of comfort in the company of this
lovely and gifted child, so suggestive, in many ways, of her
young uncles.

When Henry Grey became Duke of Suffolk, his wife
became the duchess; Catherine was, of course, the dowager
duchess. The term dowager, however, was never used in
connection with her; Catherine was known as the Duchess of
Suffolk until the day of her death. She went back to Grims-
thorpe after Christmas, and she was there all through the
winter and spring. In June of 1552, she wrote to William
Cecil, sending with the letter a buck from her deer park.

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

By the late coming of this buck to you you shall perceive
that wild things be not ready at commandment. For truly
I have caused my keeper, yea, and went forth with him
myself on Saturday at night after I came home (which
was a marvel for me) but so desirous was I to have had
one for Mr. Larimer to have sent after him to his niece's
churching. But there is no remedy but she must be
churched without it ... But as touching your hunting
here, I would be sorry you shonld leave it undone ... I
assure you I have not to my knowledge two bucks
more in my parks. But that must not discourage you
from hunting ; for if it please you to take the pains to
kill them, I am sure I get them not unless I kill them out
of hand. Wherefore I would desire you to take the pains
and take your part of them. And also you may have as
good sport at the red deer, and I pray you take it, for I
am very glad when any of my friends may have their
pastime here, and nothing grieves me but when I can
not make their pastime with them. And therefore at
your pleasure come, and bring with you whom you
will, and you shall be welcome and they also for your
sake. And so, with my hearty commendations . . . from
Grimsthorpe this present Wednesday at six o'clock in the
morning and like a sluggard in my bed. 4

Catherine added a postscript to this letter: 'Master
Bertie is at London to conclude if he can with the heirs.
For I would gladly discharge the trust wherein my Lord
did leave me before I did for any man's pleasure anything
eke/

Obviously the duchess was an early riser. Not many
women in her position, then or now, would consider them-

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

selves "sluggards' for being in bed at six o'clock in the
morning. But perhaps the most revealing part of this letter is
the postscript, with its reference to Master Bertie, who, a
year later, would become Catherine's second husband. The
postscript seems to indicate that as early as the summer of
1552, Catherine was thinking of marrying Richard Bertie.
She was the executor of the estate of the duke, her first
husband, a duty which she wished to discharge before she
'did for any man's pleasure anything else'. But it seems
obvious that she was considering marriage when she wrote
the letter. She may have been considering it for some
months; in a letter to Cecil which she had written eight
months before, in September 1551, she had spoken to him of
someone she was sending to him, one whom he could 'use as
if I stood by'. This, too, may have been the same Master
Bertie, to whom the duchess had even then given, if not her
promise, her complete trust and confidence.

Richard Bertie was gentleman usher to the Duchess of
Suffolk. A gentleman usher was one of good birth and line-
age, who was attached to a noble household and walked
ahead of his master or mistress in ceremonial processions or
other progresses. In one of the sermons he preached before
Edward VI, in 1549, Hugh Larimer had referred to a duchess
and her gentleman usher in allegorical terms :

This faith is a great state, a lady, a duchess, a great
woman; and she hath ever a great company and train
about her as a noble estate ought to have. First she hath a
gentleman usher that goeth before her, and when he is
not there is not Lady Faith ... Now as the gentleman
usher goeth before her, so she hath a train that cometh
behind her ... they be all Faith's company, they are all

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

with her ... Lady Faith is never without her gentleman
usher, nor without her train.

There were only two duchesses in the kingdom at the time
that Latimer preached this sermon, Catherine, his friend and
patroness, and the Duchess of Somerset, who was noted for
her arrogance and her overbearing manner which had made
her extremely unpopular. It seems certain that when he
spoke in those terms of Faith, Hugh Latimer had the Duchess
of Suffolk in his mind; and her gentleman usher was, of
course, Richard Bertie.

Richard Bertie had considerable responsibility in
Catherine's household. He transacted a good deal of business
for her, sometimes going up to London to do so. He was a
man of some background, tracing his lineage back to one
Leopold de Bertie, whose ancestors were said to have
landed in England with the Saxons and who had himself
been Constable of Dover Castle at the time of King Ethelred
undoubtedly a position of trust in a time when there was
constant fear of invasion of England. Thomas Bertie, father
of Richard, was governor of Hurst Castle on the south coast
of England near the Isle of Wight, guarding the entrance to
the Solent. Henry VIII built Hurst Castle early in his reign,
and Thomas Bertie may have been the first governor of that
stronghold. And so, although far below the duchess in rank,
Richard Bertie does not appear to have been, as Lady Cecilie
Goff maintains, meanly born. He was born in Southampton
in the year 1517, was entered at Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, in 1534 and proceeded to his B.A. in 1537. He was
an accomplished gentleman, who spoke French, Italian and
Latin fluently, and was reputed to be bold and clever in
conversation and quick at repartee. Catherine would have

FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

enjoyed those qualities and found him congenial. As a
younger man he had spent a short time in the household of
the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley. He was a man of a com-
manding presence; Holbein's portrait shows a high forehead,
arched brows above large and intelligent eyes, an aquiline
nose and a long beard which made him look considerably
older than in fact he was. Unlike her first husband who had
been so much her senior, Bertie was only a little older than
the duchess. And he was as steadfast in the Protestant faith as
Catherine was herself He had been a member of Catherine's
household for some time, and they had worked together and
talked together and had come to know one another well.
And in Catherine's house Richard Bertie had had the
opportunity of knowing her friend and spiritual counsellor,
Hugh Latimer. A mutual respect and friendship had grown i
up between the two men, which was a great source of happi-
ness to Catherine of Suffolk.

During the year 1552, Hugh Latimer spent a great deal of
time at Grimsthorpe as the guest of the duchess. It was while
he was staying there at that time that he preached in
Catherine's private chapel, to her household, the seven
sermons on the Lord's Prayer, in the first of which he said:

I intend ... at the request of my most gracious lady,
to expound unto you, her household servants and others
that be willing to hear, the right understanding and
meaning of this most perfect prayer which our Savior
Himself taught us.

Latimer did as much as any Englishman to establish the
Lord's Prayer as an important part of Protestant devotion and
worship. He had stressed its importance in his preaching as early
as 1533, and throughout his sermons can be found references

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

to it. The sermons he preached at Grimsthorpe in 1552
analysed and explained this 'whole and perfect' prayer,
phrase by phrase.

! Early in the year 1553, Catherine of Suffolk and Richard
Bertie were married. Hugh Larimer was almost certainly the
minister who married them. He was again visiting at Grims-
thorpe from the day after Christmas, St Stephen's Day, 1552,
at least until after Twelfth Day - the Epiphany - 1553 ; he
preached there on December 26th and 2yth, and again on
Twelfth Day; and it may very well be that his hostess was
married during that time. The actual date of her marriage is
not recorded, but it was very early in the year 1553. Latimer
would have been happy officiating at the marriage of the
duchess to Richard Bertie. He had the same abhorrence as
Catherine had to marriages made solely for position and
advancement; he had been outspoken in his opposition to
such matches. This marriage of his friend and benefactor was
the kind of marriage in which he believed. With Catherine's
position, wealth and beauty, she could have made what
would have been regarded as an important match. But the
woman who had declined to make a loveless match for her
son would not conceivably have married without love
herself. And so she married her gentleman usher, a man
whose quality she knew, a man with whom she had fallen in
love and who had shown himself to be, as he was for the rest
of their life together, devoted above everything else to her
welfare and her happiness.

She married this man who would love, honour and keep
her', who was as convinced as she herself was of the Protes-
tant faith, and they started their Hfe together, serene and
happy, at Grimsthorpe, busy with the many responsibilities
of Catherine's estates and with the propagation and encour-

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

agement of the reformed religion among the people of the
county. It was a good and useful life, and the duchess and
her new husband were happy in it. But the storm clouds were
gathering. In January 1553, the young king Edward VI had
caught a bad cold which left the somewhat frail boy with a
hard, racking cough; it was the first sign of a rapid con-
sumption. The ambitious and unscrupulous Duke of
Northumberland, the actual head of the government,
realized that Edward's days were numbered. He realized also
that upon Edward's death his half-sister, Mary the Catholic,
daughter of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon,
would inherit the throne of England, and that would be fatal
to him. It would mean the end of his power, his prestige, his
whole position. Mary would come to the throne, that is,
unless he could devise some way of stopping her.

Northumberland moved quickly and relentlessly. His
movements were helped by the easy acquiescence of Henry
Grey, Duke of Suffolk. Henry Grey was a weak man and an
ambitious one. After the fall of Somerset, he had hitched his
wagon to Northumberland's star, and he was a ready ally in
that crafty duke's scheming. The Duke of Suffolk had moved
his family to Sheen, very near to Syon House, the home of
Northumberland. And Suffolk's eldest daughter was lovely,
young, gifted and of blood royal the Lady Jane Grey, a
friend and sometime companion to the young king, her
cousin. At one time a marriage between King Edward and
the Lady Jane had been talked about, but it had come to
nothing. Northumberland saw in this young woman, barely
sixteen years old, the perfect tool for achieving his purposes.
Jane was intelligent and beautiful, and, most important, she
was Protestant. Northumberland arranged a marriage be-
tween her and his son, Guildford Dudley. Jane was unhappy

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

about the marriage, and she resisted it as long as she could,
but her father, Northumberland's spineless tool, insisted, and
broke down her resistance. On May 2ist, 1553, Lady Jane
Grey and Guildford Dudley were married in London.
Northumberland then persuaded the young, sickly King
Edward to draw up a 'devise of the succession', in which he
left the crown of England to the Lady Jane and her heirs
male.

On July 6th, 1553, at the age of sixteen, King Edward VI
died, and four days later Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed
Queen of England in London. The country was not en-
thusiastic for her. Moreover, in all his complicated schem-
ings, Northumberland had failed to do the one thing
essential to the success of his plan. He had failed to secure the
person of Mary Tudor. And Mary Tudor had no intention of
stepping aside. When she had become aware of what was
happening in London, she had taken refuge in the Duke of
Norfolk's castle at Framlingham in Suffolk. She wrote to the
Council on July 9th, proclaiming herself her brother
Edward's lawful successor. The Council, under Northumber-
land's leadership, replied that Lady Jane was the Queen of
England. But Mary's supporters were in arms in the eastern
counties, and were moving towards London. Mary was
going to fight to defend her right to the succession. Northum-
berland went out to meet her at the head of an army, but he
had no sooner left the city than the members of the Council
began to desert, fearing for their lives. Before Northumber-
land had even reached the county of Suffolk, Lady Jane's
own father had proclaimed Mary queen in London.
Northumberland yielded himself a prisoner two days later,
and when Mary entered London she entered as queen with
her country solid behind her.

'NOT FOR THE LEAST OF HIS BENEFITS'

As for Lady Jane, a lovely young woman, zealous for her
faith, already distinguished for her learning and quite
out of place in the intrigues of her unscrupulous
father-in-law, she would gladly have taken leave
of royalty and gone back to her books and her de-
votions. But she could not choose. The Tower,
which for a brief nine days had been her royal
palace, presently became her prison. She was not to
leave it finally until she took her last sad journey to
the scaffold. 5

Catherine of Suffolk had had no part in these events.
With her husband she had been living quietly in Lincoln-
shire, busy with her estates, busy with the forwarding of the
reformed religion and busy giving Richard Bertie his first
child, a daughter, Susan. She was far from the events in
London, but not so far that news of them could not reach
her. She had always been on friendly, even affectionate terms
with her stepdaughter Frances, Lady Jane's mother. And the
Lady Jane herself was particularly dear to the duchess.
Catherine was unhappy and apprehensive, concerned over
what would happen to the lovely girl who was the innocent
pawn in the intrigues of her father-in-law and her own
father, apprehensive about the probable effect upon England
of Mary's accession to power. The Duchess of Suffolk knew
the Princess Mary Tudor. They had never been close
friends, but they had been friendly acquaintances. The duchess
had no doubt at all about Mary's attitude towards religion, or
that she would do everything in her power to impose Roman
Catholicism upon England when she came to the throne.
Catherine of Suffolk would never have lent herself to a plot
which could not but result in victimizing the innocent Jane

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Grey. But she could only view the prospect of Mary as queen
with very real dread.

Mary entered London as queen on August 3rd, 1553, and
practically her first act was to release from the Tower the
prisoners detained there by her father and her brother, in-
cluding of course the Duke of Norfolk (a strong Catholic
who had been imprisoned for treason by Henry VIII), and
Stephen Gardiner, one-time Bishop of Winchester. Gardiner
had been deprived and put in prison early in Edward's
reign ; Mary restored him to his see and made him her Lord
Chancellor. He was, in fact, though not in name, Prime
Minister. His star was now in the ascendancy, and before
long he would be relentless in the use of his power against
the hated heretics who had caused his downfall. One of the
early targets of his persecution would be the fearless, forth-
right young woman whose religious position was so repug-
nant to him, who had exercised her wit at his expense often
enough to earn his hatred and his undying wish for vengeance
Catherine Bertie, Duchess of Suffolk.

THE STORM BREAKS

IMMEDIATELY upon Mary's accession, the restoration of
Roman Catholicism in England began. The three most out-
spoken of the Protestant clerics, Thomas Cranmer,
Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Larimer, were promptly sent to
the Tower; and the questionings began. Catherine of
Suffolk was horrified; although in her inmost heart she had
foreseen what would undoubtedly happen, she was pro-
foundly shaken. And she was certain that this was only a
foretaste of more that was to come, more persecution of
those whom Mary and Gardiner regarded as heretics, more
questionings, more imprisonments. Her own turn would
come, she could have no doubt of that. She had been far too
outspoken in her antipathy to Romanism, too energetic in
her propagation and support of the Protestant cause for her
to be able to escape. But she made up her mind that as long
as possible she would do all she could for those who were
already suffering. She sent alms to the men in the Tower: a
letter from Ridley to Augustine Bernher, Larimer's Swiss
servant, reads in part:

I have received my Lady Grace's alms, six royals, six
shillings and eightpence. I have written a letter to her
Grace, but have made no mention thereof, wherefore I
desire you to render her Grace hearty thanks. Blessed be
God; as for myself, I want nothing, but my Lady

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Grace's alms come happily to relieve my poor brother's
[Larimer's] necessity, whom you know they have cast
and keep in prison ... 1

On the cover of the letter is written : "This alms was sent
him by the Lady Catherine, duchess of Suffolk.'

Ridley was taking every precaution to protect the duchess.
He did not even mention her kindness in a letter to her,
doubtless fearing lest it be intercepted. But Catherine was
not trying to protect herself. Her friends, the friends of what
she believed in so completely, were in trouble, and she
would do all she could to help them, no matter what the cost
to herself

In Lent of 1554, Gardiner made his move against the
duchess. He gave orders to the Sheriff of Lincoln to bring
Richard Bertie before him in London. The sheriff, knowing
Bertie to be a man of his word, contented himself with taking
his bond, with two sureties of a thousand pounds, to appear
before the bishop on Good Friday. 2

In the morning of Good Friday, Richard Bertie presented
himself at Gardiner's palace, to find the bishop in a white
rage at him for not having obeyed his summons. Bertie dis-
claimed any knowledge of a summons, saying that the sheriff
had told him only that the bishop wished to see him and had
taken his bond to appear on this day. The bishop was not
mollified, but he said, testily,

1 have appointed myself this day for devotion, and I will
not trouble myself with you. But I enjoin you in a thousand
pounds ... to be here again tomorrow at seven of the clock.'

Richard Bertie was prompt the following morning, and
was admitted to Gardiner's presence immediately. The bishop
led up to his real reason for summoning Bertie by informing

THE STORM BREAKS

him that it was 'the Queen's pleasure that you shall make
present payment of four thousand pounds due to her father
by duke Charles, late husband to the duchess your wife,
whose executor she was*.

'May it please your Lordship, 5 Bertie answered, 'that debt
is estalled [arranged to be paid in instalments] and is according
to that estallment truly answered/

'Tush, the Queen will not be bound to estaUments in the
time of Ket's government,' Gardiner spoke haughtily, Torso
I esteem the late government/

'The estallment was appointed by King Henry the Eighth/
answered Catherine's husband. 'Besides, the same was by
special commissioners confirmed in King Edward's time, and
the Lord Treasurer being an executor also to the duke Charles,
solely and wholly took upon him before the said com-
missioners to discharge the same/

'If it be true that you say, I will show you favour/ the
bishop answered him. 'But of another thing, Master Bertie, I
will admonish you as meaning you well. I hear evil of your
religion, yet I hardly can think evil of you, whose mother
I knew to be as godly a Catholic as any within the land, your-
self brought up with a master whose education, if I should
disallow, I might be charged as author of his error. [Gardiner
here undoubtedly referred to Wriothesley.] Besides, partly I
know you myself, and understand enough of my friends to
make me your friend/ The bishop spoke smoothly. 'Where-
fore/ he went on, 'I will not doubt of you; but I pray you if
I may ask the question of my lady your wife, is she now as
ready to set up the mass as she was lately to pull it down,
when she caused a dog in a rochet to be carried and called by
my name? Or doth she think her lambs now safe enough
which said to me when I veiled [doffed] my bonnet to her

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

out of my chamber window in the Tower, that it was merry
with the lambs now the wolf was shut up ? Another time, my
Lord her husband having invited me and divers ladies to
dinner, desired every lady to choose him whom she loved
best, and so place themselves. My Lady, your wife, taking me
by the hand for that my Lord would not have her to take
himself, said that for as much as she could not sit down with
my Lord whom she loved best, she had chosen me, whom she
loved worst/

'Of the device of the dog/ answered Bertie quietly, 'she
was neither the author nor the allower. The words though in
that season they sounded bitter to your Lordship, yet if it
should please you without offence to know the cause, I am
sure the one will purge the other. As touching setting up of
mass, which she learned not only by strong persuasions of
divers excellent learned men, but by universal consent and
order whole six years past, inwardly to abhor, if she should
outwardly allow she should both to Christ show herself a
false Christian and unto her prince a masking subject. You
know, my Lord, one by judgement reformed is more worth
than a thousand transformed temporizers. To force a con-
fession of religion by mouth contrary to that in the heart
worketh damnation where salvation is pretended/

'Yea, marry, that deliberation would do well if she were
required to come from an old religion to a new/ the bishop
spoke with heat, 'but now she is to return from a new to an
ancient religion, wherein when she made me her gossip she
was as earnest as any/

'For that, my Lord/ answered Bertie, 'not long since she
answered a friend of hers, using your Lordship's speech, that
religion went not by age but by truth, and therefore she was
to be turned by persuasion and not by commandment/

100

THE STORM BREAKS

4 I pray you, think you it possible to persuade her?'

'Yea, verily, with the truth, for she is reasonable enough/
answered Catherine's husband.

4 It will be a marvellous grief to the prince of Spain,' said
Gardiner sadly, 'and to all the nobility that shall come with
him, when they shall find but two noble personages within
this land of the Spanish race, the Queen and my Lady your
wife, and one of them gone from the faith.'

1 trust they shall find no fruits of infidelity in her,'
answered Bertie.

The bishop responded by urging Richard Bertie to strive
earnestly for the reform of his wife's religious opinions, and
with protestations of friendship towards him, he dismissed
Bertie from his presence.

But Richard Bertie was not easy in his mind as he left the
bishop's palace. What, he wondered, lay behind that suave
exterior? What plans were maturing behind those cold,
inscrutable eyes? Gardiner's expressions of friendly intent did
not delude Catherine's husband into any false sense of security .
He went home to his wife thoughtfully, far from comfortable
about the interview just over. Nor were his forebodings
lessened during the next few days, as his friends assured him
that far from entertaining the friendship he had professed,
Gardiner would never forgive Catherine. The bishop was an
uncompromising Catholic; in his eyes Catherine was a
heretic, to be dealt with as such unless she could be made
publicly to recant. He was, moreover, a proud and haughty
man, and Catherine had made fun of him and treated him
without respect. Probably nothing could ever erase from his
mind the memory of her taunts, or mitigate his personal
desire for vengeance.

Richard Bertie realized all this, and he was afraid for his

101

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

beautiful and fearless wife. He knew, too well, the punish-
ments for heresy, the imprisonment, the endless questionings
and inquisitions, the cruelties. Hugh Latimer had been in the
Tower for nearly two years now, as had Ridley and Cranmer
and the others. The wheels of the machine were beginning to
turn. Bertie knew very well that the chances of Latimer and
their other friends being allowed to live were slim. What
would happen to his Catherine, with her steadfast faith, her
readiness to defend that faith and her quick and often im-
prudent wit?

Bertie knew that he must act without delay. He sensed that
Gardiner had not quite made up his mind what he was going
to do with Catherine; he might, if he acted quickly, forestall
him. And if the bishop's cupidity was as great as Richard
Bertie guessed it was, he might be induced to help Bertie save
his wife, without realizing that he was doing so.

And so Catherine's husband sought out Gardiner once
more. There were, he told the bishop, large sums of money
owing to the duchess's late husband, the Duke of Suffolk,
from overseas, and especially from the Emperor Charles V.
As the duke's executor, the duchess had authorized him, her
husband, to act for her in recovering these moneys. He would
have to go overseas to get this fortune, Bertie told the
bishop; all other efforts had failed. But now, when a marriage
was in contemplation between Queen Mary and the son of
the emperor, the time would seem ripe to persuade the
emperor to discharge his obligation to one of the English
nobility. And so he, Bertie, was asking the bishop for his help
in procuring a passport to travel overseas as much as might be
necessary to recover the funds.

The prospect of a considerable sum of money coming into
England did not fail to interest Gardiner. The fact that it

102

THE STORM BREAKS

would be coming to one who would probably, sooner or
later, be attainted for heresy and whose possessions would
therefore be forfeit, may also have crossed his mind, ail of
which Bertie had probably counted upon. However, the
bishop did not show his feelings by so much as the flicker of
an eyelash.

'I like your device well/ he told Bertie, 'but I think it
better that you tarry the prince's coming and I will procure
you his letters, also to his father/

But Bertie knew he dared not tarry.

'Nay,' he spoke respectfully, 'under your Lordship's
correction and pardon of so liberal a speech, I suppose the
time will be less convenient; for when the marriage is con-
summate, the Emperor hath his desire, but till then he will
refuse nothing to win credit with us.'

'By Saint Mary, you guess shrewdly/ exclaimed the
bishop. 'Well, proceed in your suit and it shall not lack my
helping hand.'

So Richard Bertie proceeded in his suit; and by the end of
the spring, with the bishop's backing, he had obtained from
Queen Mary licence to cross and recross the seas as might be
necessary to conclude his business. And in June he sailed from
Dover on his first trip, leaving the duchess with their baby
daughter behind him in London.

Without doubt it was hard for Bertie to leave his wife
behind him; without doubt it was hard for her to be left
behind. But Catherine's husband had to prepare the way, and
find out where it would be safe for them to go, before he
ventured to take his little family, his wife and baby Susan,
into a strange land. And just at this time he felt pretty certain
that while the bishop was undoubtedly watching Catherine's
movements constantly, he would not make his move against

103

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

her until she had the money which Bertie was ostensibly
travelling to recover for her. Gardiner wanted money.
Catherine with the Duke of Suffolk's fortune to confiscate
would be a much more desirable prize for the bishop to seize
than Catherine without it. He would be vigilant in his
watch, but he would undoubtedly wait to see the results of
Bertie's mission before taking definite action against her.
Richard Bertie gambled on that being the case. He had to
take some risk, and as it turned out, he was right in the risk
he took.

Bertie crossed the seas in June, and Catherine and little
Susan stayed in London, with their servants, at the Barbican.
It was a long and trying wait for the duchess. There was
practically no one whom she could be sure she could trust.
Gardiner's spies were all through the city ; for all she knew,
one of her household servants might be one of the bishop's
men. Any false step or ill-considered remark of hers could
lead to instant disaster. She knew this, and she curbed both her
tongue and her activities while she waited for news from her
husband. They were long, hard days for Catherine of
Suffolk; they seemed interminable. Summer gave way to
autumn and autumn to winter. The days grew shorter and
colder; when she got up in the mornings it was still as dark
as night, and by mid-afternoon the daylight was going again.
But though the daylight was short, Catherine's waking hours
seemed never-ending. Smithfield, where heretics were
burned, was not very far from the Barbican, and when there
was an execution, the heavy air was leaden with smoke, a
grim reminder to Catherine of the fate that might He in wait
for her. She spent most of her time with her baby, caring for
her and playing with her. At thirty-four years of age,
Catherine of Suffolk, who had never in all her life considered

104

THE STORM BREAKS

the consequences of anything she might do or say, was
undergoing the most rigid self-discipline. Her very life
depended upon how she withstood this test hers, her
husband's and her baby's. So she stayed in or near her house
with her child, quietly and, to all appearances, calmly and
happily, and she waited.

Finally December was almost spent. How the news that
the end of her waiting was at hand came to the duchess, or
by what means, is not recorded. Foxe says that when Richard
Bertie left his wife in June, the date of her own departure was
agreed upon between them. But this seems slightly improb-
able. Bertie could not have known in advance what he could
find, or how long it would take him. And he would wish his
wife not to delay her departure from England one minute
longer than necessary, certainly not to wait for a date arbitrar-
ily set in advance. Possibly Bertie sent word to the duchess by
one Robert Cranwell, whom Foxe describes as 'an old
gentleman' especially provided by Bertie for the purpose of
helping his wife's escape, and the only single person who was
aware of her intended flight.

On the last day of the old year, Catherine made her simple
preparations for her journey. Quietly, so as not to arouse the
suspicions of her household, she made bundles of the bare
necessities of life, a change of clothing and some blankets,
and warm garments for her child. Her task accomplished, she
went to bed, but not to sleep. She was joyful at the prospect
of seeing her husband again, but foil of apprehension as she
thought of the difficulties and dangers that lay ahead of her.
She had to tell a few of her servants that they must be ready
betimes in the morning. The Duchess of Suffolk had never
moved without a retinue; half a dozen servitors seemed a
very small company for such a trip as she contemplated.

105

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Foxe describes those she took with her as 'the meanest of her
servants, for she doubted the best would not adventure that
fortune with her. They were in number four men, one a
Greek born, which was a rider of horses, another a joiner,
the third a brewer, the fourth a fool, one of the kitchen, one
gentlewoman and a laundress.'

It was between four and five o'clock on New Year's
morning, 1555, when the duchess, with her baby daughter in
her arms and accompanied by her little band, stepped out of
the door of the Barbican and into the dark cold of the fore-
court, silent at that early hour. They trod quietly, but not
quietly enough. As they were going through the outer gate
that led to the street, a herald named Atkinson, the keeper of
her house and, possibly, one of Gardiner's men, heard a sound
and came with a torch in his hand to see what it was about.
As he paused in the doorway of the house itself, the duchess,
her tiny group with her, slipped through the gate and into
the blackness of the London street. In their haste they dropped
the 'male' which contained most of the parcels of their
necessaries, but they dared not stop even long enough to pick
it up. Once in the street, the duchess whispered to the others
to meet her at Lion Key, between London Bridge and
Billingsgate, and quickly and silently the little company
scattered, only the two women staying with their mistress
and her child. The herald had hesitated, to look and see what
the parcels were, and this gave Catherine the moment she
needed to slip into the shelter of the gate of Charterhouse,
near by. So when the herald came through the gateway of
the Barbican, all that met his eyes, straining to see through the
smoky darkness, all that the light of his torch showed as he
turned it one way and the other, was the black emptiness of
the London street on a chill, foggy morning. Unconvinced

106

THE STORM BREAKS

but unable to do anything, he turned back and fell to
ransacking the parcels to see if they might give him any clue
as to what had happened.

Catherine lost no time. With her sleeping child in her arms
and the two women beside her, hurrying to keep up with her,
she sped through the cold darkness by Finsbury Fields and
through the silent streets leading towards Moorgate, where
suddenly, more by accident than any design, they came upon
the others of their company, trying to find their way through
the black fog. Together they all went on towards the river,
until at last Lion Key lay before them, and the barge that
would take them down the Thames. The mist lay heavy on
the river, thick and impenetrable, so that the bargeman was
very reluctant to push off; but finally the persuasiveness of
the duchess prevailed, the man gave a shove with his pole and
the trip had finally begun.

The trip had begun, but Catherine's danger and troubles
had not ended. As soon as day had fairly broken, the Council
had been informed of the duchess's flight. Certain of the
members promptly went to her house to inventory her goods,
and means were immediately devised and set in motion to
catch her and prevent her escape.

The barge kept on down the river through the heavy fog.
It went slowly, for visibility was extremely limited. Some-
where along the way, the men with the duchess had got
separated from her party, and were never heard of again.
But the loyal Master Cranwell was at Leigh, well down the
river below Tilbury, waiting for her arrival. In Leigh, Cran-
well had discovered that her flight was already known, and
that agents of the bishop were waiting, on the chance that
she might come there. Casting about for some place of
safety for Catherine and some way to get her to it, Cranwell

107

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

had come upon an old friend, a merchant by the name of
Gosling, and had begged him to help. This Gosling was glad
to do. He had a married daughter, unknown in the town of
Leigh, and when Catherine stepped off the barge, dressed as
she was in clothes suitable for a merchant's wife, she was
greeted as Mistress White the daughter's name and
was hustled to Gosling's house for a reunion with her 'father'.

This interlude gave Catherine a chance to catch her
breath, and to get some much-needed rest before embarking
upon the next, arduous leg of her journey. She rested as well
as she could through that day and the next, and busied herself
with fixing up some clothing for her baby, for all the child's
things were in the parcels that had fallen from their hands and
been left behind them. It was not easy for Catherine to relax;
she was constantly on the alert for agents of Gardiner, for she
knew very well that the bishop would be unrelenting in his
pursuit of her. Her mind was far from being at ease, but
before it was time for her to set sail from Leigh, her spirits
were marvellously revived. Some time before the sailing
hour, Richard Bertie, who had got back to England but had,
for her protection as well as his own, stayed in hiding from
Gardiner's spies, managed to join his wife and baby. 3 What-
ever now lay before her, Catherine had the broad shoulders
of her husband to support and protect her. Her relief, as well
as her joy at seeing him, was enormous.

They set sail as soon as wind and tide were favourable, and
soon the coast-line of England dwindled and vanished behind
them as their ship made its way across the channel. But winds
can change, and the coast-line of Zeeland had come within
their sight when suddenly they realized that instead of grow-
ing more distinct, it was fading and receding. To their
dismay, they recognized the fact that they were being blown

108

THE STORM BREAKS

back, back towards England. And then the wind veered
again, and once more they were heading in the right direc-
tion. Twice this happened, and the second time they were
driven back almost to the point from whence they had
started. The little ship had provisions for only a short voyage,
and so the captain was obliged to send one of his men ashore
for more food and water. This simple seaman was promptly
seized upon and questioned, but his guileless answers, to the
effect that the only person on board was a mean merchant's
wife, for some reason satisfied his questioners, and for the
third time the little craft set sail and moved in the direction
of the Low Countries.

This time the ship made it. This time the coast-line they
longed to reach did not come out of the mist only to recede
and disappear; it appeared, a thin line, flat and uncluttered,
on the grey horizon, getting ever sharper and clearer, until
buildings began to be clearly visible, and finally people
moving about. Then the sails began to flutter down, the
little ship slid into the harbour; and Catherine of Suffolk, her
baby in her arms and her husband at her side, stepped ashore
on to the soil of Brabant.

109

VII

EXILE

THE winds of late January blew sharp and cold over the
frozen Low Countries as the duchess and her husband
set foot for the first time on this foreign land. In the
flat countryside, there was nothing to break the sweep of
bitter air blowing off the North Sea, and the wind cut the
travellers, freezing faces and hands and whipping the
women's skirts about their legs as they walked across the icy
ground. The country seemed stark and uninviting, but the
gales which buffeted them no longer had the power to blow
them back to England and into the waiting hands of
Gardiner's men. The steel-grey sea now lay between them
and the bishop, and the land on which they stood, however
cold and bleak, was a land of promise to the Berries, of
safety and security. Whatever might lie ahead of them, dis-
comforts or even perils, they now gave thanks that their
difficult sea voyage lay behind them.

Once ashore, the duchess and her women immediately
changed their clothing to the costume of Netherland women,
with 'hikes' long, hooded cloaks which enveloped them
from head to foot giving them some protection from the
biting cold. Richard Bertie and his family did not linger long
near the sea coast. Safe as they felt themselves, Bertie knew
that it was still too near to England, too accessible to their
enemies. Their ultimate objective was the Hansa town of
Wesel, perhaps a hundred miles inland in the duchy of

EXILE

Cleves (in what is Germany today). A number of Walloons
had fled to Wesel to escape religious persecution, and there
was a Protestant congregation there. The pastor of the con-
gregation, one Francis Perusell, sometime known as
Francis de Rivers, had once been the minister of the French
refugee church in London, where he had known the duchess
and had received many kindnesses at her hands.

Richard Bertie had written to Master Perusell, telling him
of their flight from England and asking him to find a house
for them in Wesel, and protection, while keeping their real
identity a secret from all except the chief magistrate of the
town. The Berties, on leaving the sea coast, made their way
inland over the flat country to the little town of Santon, 1
on the edge of the duchy of Cleves, perhaps five miles short
of Wesel. There they found lodgings and settled down quietly
to await Master PeruselTs answer to Richard Bertie's letter.
They were safe in Santon, they thought; certainly they were
quite secure as compared to their state in England, and they
were, they believed, safer than they would have been nearer
to the coast and the lanes of travel between England and the
Low Countries. They lived in disguise, taking every precau-
tion possible against discovery, and they lived very simply, as
people of no consequence, each day thanking God for their
safety but each day looking for the word from Master
Perusell that would take them to the still greater security of
Wesel. From Santon, which stands on a slight rise, only
about twenty feet but at that practically the highest land in
that part of the country, they could see, on a clear day, the
steeple of the church of St Willebrod in Wesel, where they
hoped ultimately to be.

Santon was a charming little town, quite near the Rhine,
which flowed northward only about a mile to the east. The

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

houses stood around the square, and dominating all was the
great mass, not very long completed, of the collegiate church
of St Victor, a magnificent Gothic structure, dwarfing all the
other buildings in the town. Its great towers reached upwards,
and daily its bells, ringing to call the people to mass or to
special services, reminded everyone in the town of the power
of Rome. But the people were quiet, friendly folk, who
smiled shyly when they saw Catherine or her husband in the
streets (not a frequent occurrence, as the Berties kept very
much to themselves, going out for an occasional walk with
their little girl or doing the necessary errands for a simplS
existence but otherwise staying close to home). It was an
uneventful life, but after the constant fears and dangers of the
past year and the long separation from one another, Catherine
and Richard Bertie were contented and asked for nothing
more than to be able to stay where they were, quiet and
unmolested, until such time as they should hear from Master
Perusell that they could have a safe home in Wesel.

But their security was short-lived. Before the month of
February was past, before the looked-for message had come
from Master Perusell, their peace was shattered. Richard
Bertie, out in the town on some errand, was approached by a
man of Santon with news that put an abrupt end to the com-
fortable feelings he and Catherine had begun to enjoy. There
were, the man told Bertie, those who did not share the belief
that he and his wife were the inconsequential little folk they
pretended to be. It was being whispered about that they were
quite different, that they were in fact persons of importance;
and the rumours had reached the ears of Antoine de Perrault,
| Bishop of Arras and dean of the minster at Santon. The
I bishop, the townsman warned, was already making his plans
Ito descend upon Bertie and the duchess suddenly, without

112

EXILE

warning, to examine them as to their status and their religion.
Richard Bertie listened quietly to what his informant had
to say, not daring to show his consternation by so much as a
disturbed look or an exclamation. The man might be the
friendly human being he appeared to be; he might, on the
other hand, be an agent sent to sound Bertie's reaction to his
news. Catherine's husband was well aware of the craftiness
of their enemies, and he knew that he must never fail to take
care lest an unadvised gesture might betray his wife and
himself into their hands. He bade the man a courteous good
morning and went on his way. Once out of sight, however,
he made all possible haste back to his home and the duchess.
There was no time to be lost, he realized that; they must
leave Santon without delay. He realized also that they dared
not do anything which might look to a chance observer as
though they were fleeing. They could not leave their house
carrying baggage, as if for a journey; they must go un-
encumbered, taking with them only such bare essentials as
could be carried without attracting notice. And where
should they go, and to what welcome, if any? Bertie's
concern was great, the greater because of his newly acquired
knowledge that his wife was with child. She was now thirty-
six years old, an advanced age to be carrying a baby in the
point of view of those days. Surely it was a monstrous idea
for her to set forth into the unknown. But they had no
choice; they must go, quickly and quietly, and they must go
on foot. And so, that afternoon, as though they meant simply
to take a walk in the fresh air, Richard Bertie and his wife,
with baby Susan, walked out of the door of their house and
down the street of Santon, followed, at a discreet distance, by
their two servants. They walked in a leisurely manner so
long as they were within the town, as if they were enjoying

113

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

the brisk air of the winter afternoon. Once out of the town
their pace quickened. They walked eastward, in the direction
of Wesel, always towards the towers of the church of St
Willebrod. No word had yet come to them from Master
Peruselt, but they had to take the chance of finding him and
of finding a welcome in Wesel. They had nowhere else to go.

The air was damp and raw, threatening rain or snow, as
they trudged into the country, but they kept steadily on.
They had gone scarcely more than a mile when it began to
rain, in a steady, cold downpour that drenched their gar-
ments through, chilling them to their very bones. To make
matters worse, the rain which felt so cold as it struck them,
thawed the frost-hardened ground, turning the icy surface to
slush that sucked at their every footstep, making walking all
but impossible. Darkness was falling fast, and the rain came
down steadily, with no sign of stopping. Bertie sent their
two servants to houses as they passed by, to try to hire some
kind of wagon for his wife and baby. But none was to be
had, and they plodded on, Bertie now carrying the child in
his arms while Catherine carried his rapier and cloak for him.
At last, in the darkness and close to seven o'clock, they came
to the walls of the town of Wesel. It had taken them nearly
four hours to travel about five miles through the rain and
mud.

Their spirits rose as they walked through the gate in the
great walls. They could sense the strength of the fortifications
that surrounded the town and they took comfort from the
feeling of security given by stone and mortar and from the
knowledge that within this town there were many Protes-
tants like themselves. Roman Catholics there were in plenty
on the continent of Europe, in near-by France as well as in
the Low Countries and in Germany; but surely here behind

114

EXILE

these stout walls, in company with others of their own faith,
they would be safe from persecution. And so their hearts
were lighter as they entered the town. This was not the way
they had hoped to come to this haven. They were wet, tired
and half frozen, and no one knew of their coming. But they
had got there, and they approached the first inn they came to,
with a sigh of relief at seeing shelter in sight. They were
turned away brusquely. No rooms were available, they were
told, and though Bertie offered to pay more than the inn-
keeper's price, the answer did not change. On they trudged,
from one hostel to another, always meeting the same rebuff.
The hosts of the inns would barely speak to them. In their
drenched and dishevelled condition they presented a sorry
picture, and the innkeepers took Bertie for a lance knight
the common foot-soldier of Germany, hated everywhere for
his brutality and Catherine for his woman, and they would
have none of them.

It was too much for the duchess. Her baby was shivering in
her wet clothes, crying pathetically from cold and hunger;
and as Catherine held her close in her arms to try to warm
her, her own head drooped over her child and she wept as if
her heart would break. A lump rose in Bertie's throat. Was it
for this that they had come to this far country, to be hunted
like animals, turned out in the cold and rain, hungry, tired
and friendless ? Catherine's sobs shook her slender body. She
had looked forward with such eagerness to their arrival in
Wesel; there, she had felt sure, they would find kindness and
warmth and asylum. She held her child closer to her, with
her free hand clinging to her husband. But try as she would,
she could not control her weeping.

Richard Bertie gazed about him, wondering what he could
do now to bring some comfort to these two who were so

115

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

dear to him. Looming black in the darkness and rain, he saw
the outlines of a church. Gently he guided his wife's stumb-
ling feet towards it and into the porch, where he eased her
down in a protecting corner.

'Stay thou here/ he told her softly, 'and I will go and find
food and fire, and coverings.'

Leaving his wife and child as comfortable as he could make
them, Bertie strode out into the dark, unfriendly street, not
knowing which way to turn, in which direction to go. In
spite of his brave words, he was all but despairing of finding
one who would sell him anything; and the first man he
approached made him more than ever aware of the difficulties
of their predicament. For he could neither understand the
man nor make himself understood. With all his linguistic
ability in French, Italian and Latin, Bertie had scarcely any
Dutch. He went blindly on, meeting with one blank look
after another as he tried the languages he knew on the people
he met in the rain-swept streets. Finally he found himself once
more in the square before the church where his wife and baby
awaited him and the comforts he would bring. Slowly and
more slowly he approached the church, dreading to tell his
half-frozen Catherine that he had not even a bit of straw to
put between her and the cold stones of the porch. He walked
slowly and sadly, when suddenly a sound made him stop in
his tracks. Straining his ears he heard it again coming out of
the darkness, the sound of voices, speaking in Latin. Bertie
groped his way towards the sound, and found two young
Dutch boys talking together in a language which he knew
and could speak. He broke in on their conversation, and
offered them two stivers (silver coins) if they would take him
and his wife and baby to the house of some Walloon. The
boys hardly expected anyone to be about on such a night, let

116

EXILE

alone offering them silver for what seemed to them such a
simple errand. They were astonished, but they waited while
Bertie ran up to the porch and got Catherine and Susan, and
then they led them, just a little way, to a house, where they
left them abruptly and vanished into the darkness, clutching
their stivers in their hands. At Bertie's first knock the door
was opened, and the shaft of light that came from within
disclosed the sorry-looking trio, bedraggled, dirty, shivering.

'What are you,' asked the man in the house, 'who are you
and what seek you?'

Bertie answered, * We are English, and we seek the house of
one Master Perusell.'

The man seemed surprised. 'Stay a while,' he said, and
turned from the door and went back inside. Bertie heard him
talking with someone in an inner room. In less than a minute
the man was back, and at his side, staring in disbelief, stood
Master Perusell. A minute they stood so, each gazing at the
other speechless, when the pastor stretched out his arms to
them and drew the three weary waifs out of the rain and
cold, into light and warmth and friendliness.

The mistress of the house took the duchess and little Susan
with her to her bedroom, where she gave Catherine dry
clothing to put on and even found a little dress, belonging to
her child, for the baby. Hardly able to speak for gratitude
and relief, Catherine dressed herself as the kindly hostess
rubbed her child dry and put on her the warm clothing.
Together they went downstairs, to find a fire burning, and
the cheerful light of candles and a good dinner. Catherine's
husband, clean and dry and dressed like herself in warm
borrowed clothing, sat near the fire, listening to Master
PeruselTs story.

That very day, the pastor told them, he had completed the

117

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

arrangements for their coming to Wesel, and at the moment
when their knock came at the door, he had been telling his
friends, with whom he was having supper, about them. The
host had been very much surprised when he went to the door
and found them standing there, but he had not guessed their
true identity. Wet and bedraggled as they were, he had
believed, and had so told Master Perusell, that servants of the
English folk he had been talking about were even then on the
doorstep, looking for him. Of all the houses in Wesel, know-
ing nothing of what the people they guided really wanted,
those two boys had brought Bertie and his family to the one .
man they sought. It seemed an age since they had left the
warmth and comfort of their simple lodging in Santon. But
although at first Wesel had been unfriendly and forbidding,
they had never dreamed or even dared to hope, when they
had had to start out without a message from Master Perusell,
how warm and complete would be their final welcome
there.

Within a very few days after their arrival, their friend had
found a house for them in the town, into which they moved
with relief and joy. Gradually the news of who they were got
about among the Walloons, and on the next Sunday a
preacher in Wesel publicly rebuked the innkeepers, from his
pulpit, for their inciviHty and unkindness to the strangers
within their gates, 'discoursing how not only princes some-
times are received in the images of private persons, but angels
in the shape of men'. Little by little the fear that had come to
be the constant companion of Richard Bertie and Catherine
faded, as the people of Wesel made them welcome and as
they were able to talk openly about their faith with others of
the same persuasion and to worship their God according to
their belief. The cold raw winter passed into spring, and

118

EXILE

spring became summer, green and lush in the damp, flat
country, country which was quite different from their own
rolling Lincolnshire but which reminded them, with its tiny
streams and patches of green woodland, of the fen country
round about Cambridge, and which was beautiful to them
because of the friendly atmosphere. Through the summer, as
Catherine lived peacefully in Wesel, serenely awaiting the
coming of her new baby, the memory of their cold and un-
comfortable journey from Santon and of the fears that had
dogged their footsteps slipped far into the back of her mind,
never quite forgotten but no longer the nightmare it had
been.

Catherine's and Richard Bertie's son was born on October
1 2th. He was baptized in Wesel, probably in the great brown
Gothic church of St Willebrod, the same church whose
steeple had been a beacon to them in their journey from
Santon, in whose porch, only seven months before, Catherine
had huddled, unhappy and half frozen, while her husband
searched for food and warmth for her and Susan. Now it was
all different. They stood there, happy and unafraid, as their
little son was christened by Henry Bomelius, the pastor of
the church, little Susan at their^^lHegazing wide-eyed up at
the ceiling with its intricately ribbed vaulting. A few kind,
good friends stood near by as Richard Bertie gave Master
Bomelius the baby's name, Peregrine Bertie, chosen for him
by his parents because he had been born during their wander-
ings. This was a happy time for the duchess and her husband;
they had each other, they had two beautiful, healthy children
and they had freedom, to think and speak and worship
according to the dictates of their own consciences. If they
thought with sadness and nostalgia of their loved home in
England, they thought with ever-increasing gratitude and

119

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

affection of their adopted home and of the kind people who
had made them a welcome part of their lives. However long
they might stay there, they were happy and content.

But once more the storm clouds were gathering over the
heads of Catherine of Suffolk and her husband.

Some time during the winter of 1555-6, the blow fell.
Queen Mary's ambassador in the Netherlands was Sir John
Mason, a practising Catholic and a servant to the queen, but
also a friend to the many English who were living in exile in
the Low Countries. Mason sent word to Richard Bertie that
knowledge had come to him that Lord Paget, one of the
queen's Privy Councillors, then in Holland, had invented an
errand to the baths near by, that the Duke of Brunswick,
with ten ensigns, would shortly pass by Wesel, and that
together they planned to intercept and charge Bertie and his
! wife with heresy. "Wesel was no longer a safe place for
Catherine and her husband. Once again Richard Bertie was
obliged to tell his wife that their period of security was at an
end, that they must, as quickly as possible, leave this haven
that they had come to love and the friends who had become
dear to them both, and again take to the road to escape their
persecutors.

They left their comfortable house and the town of Wesel
with its friendly folk, sadly and reluctantly, and travelled to
a part of Germany known as High Dutchland. This journey
took them out of the flat country of Cleves and up the
Rhine, through the narrowing river-valley with mountains
lowering above them on either side, threatening heights with
g^reat fortress-castles on top. Who were in those ominous
fortresses, were they friendly or antagonistic to the travellers
thd^r watched, far below? Bertie and Catherine could not
know. It was a long journey and a dangerous one; with two

120

EXILE

little children, one a babe in arms, it was difficult and
arduous. They were heading for the town of Weinheim in
the Palatinate, a place where they knew they would be as
safe from their persecutors as they could be anywhere. Otto
Heinrich, the Prince Palatine, was a Protestant; he and his
brother whom he had succeeded had both been friends of
Martin Bucer. It is possible that during his stay in Cambridge,
Bucer had told Catherine about the two brothers and their
sympathy for the reformed religion. Perhaps that was why
Catherine and her husband had decided to make the long and
hard trip up the Rhine. Over the mountains as the crow flies,
Weinheim is about one hundred and fifty miles from Wesel;
it was much farther as they had to travel. They may have
gone part of the way by boat, it would have been shorter so,
but still slow since they would have been going up river,
against the current. However, Richard Bertie and his
Catherine were not to be deterred by hardship or fatigue, and
finally they reached their goal, where the Prince Palatine
took them under his protection and where once more they
settled down to live.

The town of Weinheim was east of the Rhine, in the
mountains of the Oberwald. It lay in a curve of the moun-
tains, protected from the cold north-east winds, and it had a
warm and gentle climate. Citron grew in Weinheim, and
even some dwarf palms, but beech trees and occasional oaks
reminded the Berties of Lincolnshire. And here and there a
field of grain waved on the steep hillsides. The little family
settled down in a castle high on a hill by the town, a castle
with thick walls and stout gates, belonging to the Prince
Palatine. 2 They lived there for the better part of a year, and
would have been happy to stay for as long as need be. But
although they lived as frugally as possible, and Catherine

121

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

even sold some of her jewels to get money for the necessities
of life, their funds began to dwindle alarmingly, until by the
late winter, in 1557, they saw the end of their resources
staring them in the face. The situation was a grim one, and
they did not know where to turn or what to do. Their
prospects looked utterly hopeless, when help came to them
from an entirely unexpected source. Letters came from King
Sigismund of Poland, the same king who was rumoured to
have wanted to marry the duchess some years back, and
from the Count Palatine of Vilna, both of whom had been
told of their sorry plight by John a Lasco. John a Lasco was
the son of a Polish nobleman. Born in 1499, he was
reared in the Catholic Church and had been ordained a
priest; but as a young man he had come under the influence
of Erasmus, and by the year 1540 he had become an active
reformer and the pastor of a Protestant congregation in
Emden. He spent some time in England, and in 1550 he had
been superintendent of the church of foreign Protestants in
London. A Lasco was a good friend of Thomas Cranmer and
of Martin Bucer; he had visited Bucer in Cambridge and had
probably met the duchess there; their zeal for a common
cause and their affection for the frail ecclesiastic whom they
both loved would have been strong bonds between them.
John a Lasco left England for Poland in September of 1553,
and though his path and that of the Berties did not actually
cross on the Continent, he had heard of their travels, knew
of their difficulties and had told Sigismund and the Count
Palatine about them. And so the king and the Count Palatine
wrote to Bertie and the duchess, offering them hospitality in
Poland, a house, lands, sustenance. It was a generous offer, it
would mean permanent security for Richard Bertie and his
family, exiled from their homeland for how long they could

122

EXILE

not foresee. But Poland was far away. It would take weeks,
perhaps even months of journeying through strange country
to get there; it would be a difficult and hazardous journey
with a woman and two small children. And what if they got
there and found that King Sigismund had changed his mind?

Bertie hesitated. In spite of their desperate state, he was
reluctant to expose his family to the rigours of such a trip.
And then he and the duchess talked with one William
Barlow, sometime Bishop of Bath and Wells, and now, like
themselves, an exile from Catholic England. They promised
Barlow a share in the advantage that might come to them if
he would go and see the King of Poland, find out if he indeed
meant his generous offer and get from him a statement over
his royal seal. They gave Barlow what jewels they had left,
to give to the king in token of their gratitude for his kindness,
and Barlow set forth. Travelling alone, he journeyed swiftly
across Germany and into Poland, where, through the media-
tion of the Count Palatine, he had an audience with King
Sigismund, who sent him back to Bertie and the duchess with
a formal offer, sealed with his great seal. Barlow delivered the
document to Richard Bertie, and told him and his wife of his
reception and of what he had seen for himself that Poland
was in fact now largely Protestant, and a place where religious
freedom was widespread. Nicholas Radziwell, the Count
Palatine, was an ardent Calvinist, who was devoting his
energies and his considerable fortune to advancing the cause
of Protestantism, and the King of Poland was married to
RadziwelTs daughter, Barbara. Poland would be a safe
place and a congenial atmosphere for such strong Protestants
as the duchess and her husband.

And so, for the third time, Richard Bertie and his family
took to the road. They left the castle of Weinheim in April,

123

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

just about a year from the date of their arrival there, the
duchess with the two children and her women servants in a
wagon, Bertie with four horsemen riding alongside. There
was one other member of the party, a member who in all
innocence provided the cause of the first and most dangerous
encounter of their whole journey. This was their little dog, a
pet spaniel, who sometimes rode in the wagon with the
women and children, and sometimes romped along beside it.
The little caravan started northward, towards Frankfurt.
They had not gone very far when they met a band of horse-
men, led by one of the Landgrave's captains. Clearly the
captain was spoiling for a fight, and the little dog, playing
about, perhaps nipping at the horses' heels, gave him his
excuse. The captain and his soldiers rode down upon the
travellers, attacking Bertie and his men and even thrusting
their boar spears into the wagon in which the duchess and
her children and serving-women were riding. Bertie and his
horsemen, though far outnumbered, put up a good fight,
when, in the midst of the melee, the captain's horse was
killed under him. It was an easy matter for the captain to get
another mount from one of his men, an easy matter, too, to
start a rumour that some Walloons had attacked and killed
the captain on the road. In spite of the bravery of Bertie and
his small band, the fight was going against them. From her
place in the wagon, safe now that the captain had discovered
that there were only women and children there, Catherine
could see how hopeless it was, and that unless they could get
help, her husband and all his men would be killed. When
she was able to catch Bertie's eye, the duchess motioned him
to go and get help as quickly as possible. Whereupon Bertie
suddenly wheeled his horse and rode swiftly to the nearest
town. But trouble was waiting for him there. The rumour

124

EXILE

that the captain had been killed by Bertie had reached the
town ahead of him one of the captain's men had apparently
ridden there and spread the tale and to make matters
worse, the captain's brother was in the town and believed that
this man who came for help was his brother's slayer. Led by
the enraged brother, the townsmen fell upon Bertie. He was
one against many, and among the many there was not one
who would listen to him. His back was against a wall as he
tried desperately to defend himself from the angry crowd,
when he spied a ladder leaning against a house, its upper
rungs in an open window. Somehow, he never knew how,
he managed to reach it, and like a flash he was at the top
and inside the building. But he was stiJl far from safe. At any
second he knew that his enemies would be inside and upon
him, catching him in a hopeless trap. He made his way up a
staircase and into a sort of garret at the top of the house,
where he defended himself for a time, his 'dagge' in one hand
and his rapier in the other, holding his enemies temporarily
at arm's length. He was in this state, hard-pressed on all sides,
when the burgomaster and another magistrate of the town
entered the room. Speaking in Latin, a language which was
still far easier for Bertie than Dutch, the magistrate urged
him to submit to the law. Bertie knew that he was innocent
of the captain's death, that the captain was, in fact, very much
alive; he also knew that it was sheer suicide for him to con-
tinue alone to try to fight off the enraged and unreasoning
townsfolk. And so, the magistrate having promised him
protection from the mob, Bertie put himself and his weapons
in the magistrate's hands, and was committed to safe custody
until his case should be tried.

Bertie realized that he must have help, he knew that with-
out it any trial in this town would be a mockery. Promptly

125

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

he wrote letters, which his jailer dispatched for him, to the
Landgrave and to the Earl of Erbagh, telling them both what
had happened to him and of his wife's present predicament.
The Earl of Erbagh lived only eight miles from the town
where Bertie was imprisoned, and he had known the Duchess
of Suffolk in the past. Immediately upon receiving the letter,
he set forth to Bertie's assistance, arriving in the town early
the next morning to find there not only Bertie, in safe
custody, but also the duchess, who had managed to reach the
town in her wagon with her women and children, and who
was now trying to help her husband gain his freedom.

To the astonishment and discomfiture of the people, when
the earl arrived and met the duchess, he bowed low before
her, making the obeisance due to a great lady. The men of
the town looked at one another uneasily ; the great Earl of
Erbagh, before whom they were accustomed to humble
themselves, was humbling himself before this woman whom
they had treated so badly, whose husband they had attacked,
whose children had been in danger at their hands. To make
matters worse for them, they had discovered the untruth of
the rumour about the Landgrave's captain, and that he had
not been killed but was alive and unharmed, and so they had
no excuse at all to offer for their treatment of Richard Bertie.
Shamefaced and frightened they crept away, but presently
came back, trying to ingratiate themselves with the duchess
and her husband, begging them not to have them punished
for their ill deeds.

Catherine was so much relieved to see her husband safe and
sound, and both she and Bertie were so anxious to get on
with their journey, that they made no move against the
townspeople. It was enough for them that they had each
other safe, and that their babies were unharmed. They

126

EXILE

thanked God for that, and they thanked the Earl of Erbagh
for his courtesy and prompt help; and without further delay
they got their caravan on the road again.

They reached Frankfurt without more ado, and from there
they had to travel through mountain country for miles
before they reached the level land. It was a hard passage, and
slow, through strange and rough territory. But at last they
came out of the mountains on to the plains of northern
Germany, stretching long and far between them and their
objective. For days and weeks they made their slow but
relatively uneventful way across the vast expanse, until they
came into Poland. King Sigismund received them there as
honoured guests. He had promised them his protection,
which he gave them; but in addition he installed them in a
large house, virtually a castle, in the county of Crozan in
Samogitia that part of Poland which lay along the Baltic
Sea, now Lithuania. It was a strongly Protestant area, being
directly under Prince RadziwelTs authority. In all of Poland,
however, there was a certain amount of general unrest, and
the great concern of the king was to keep the peace in his
kingdom and keep it from the horrors of civil and religious
strife such as was occurring elsewhere throughout Europe.
King Sigismund had no doubt heard about Bertie's business
and executive ability, and he knew, from the time when he
himself had been in England, of Catherine's many gifts and
of the happy way in which she had managed her own large
establishment. He invested Richard Bertie with the royal
authority, turning over to him and the duchess the govern-
ment of the province of Samogitia, to rule it in his name for
as long as they might live there.

Bertie and his family left the king's presence, with gratitude
and anticipation. This was more, much more, than they had

127

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

hoped for. Not only would they now be safe from persecu-
tion, they would also have an honourable position, where
their talents for organization and for intelligent administra-
tion would be useful and valuable, and where they would be
able to help in the work which meant so much to them both
the spread of Protestantism. Their hearts were light, there-
fore, as they took their way towards Crozan, in the midst of
a country of lakes and fens, and forests of oak trees as tall and
magnificent as those of their own home.

This, then, was the end of their journey, a happy and useful
and honourable ending for Bertie and his duchess. It was two
and a half long years since they had set sail from England.
They had been hunted and pursued; they had seen their
money dwindle to almost nothing, with no more in sight;
they had been cold, hungry and footsore more than once;
and, too, they had met kindness, generosity and hospitality.
They had had adventures of all sorts, but whatever had
happened, they had never lost their courage or their faith in
God and in mankind. In the midst of all their trials, Catherine
had borne a fine son, a healthy, robust little boy who would
one day be one of Queen Elizabeth's favoured courtiers, her
'good Peregrine' she would nickname him; and in the end
they had come to a position of honour, responsibility and
security, in which they lived, comfortably and happily and
usefully, for the remainder of Mary Tudor's Catholic reign
in England.

The trials suffered by the duchess and her husband during
Queen Mary's reign made an impression which lasted for
some years, even after both their deaths. Some time after the
year 1588, one Thomas Deloney wrote a ballad on the subject
which bore the tide, 'The Most Rare and Excellent History
of the Duchess of Suffolk and her Husband Richard Bertie's

128

EXILE

Calamity', and which was written to be sung to the tune of
'Queen Dido'. 3 Deloney was a silk-weaver by trade, who
wrote pamphlets and ballads which had a considerable popular
appeal. The ballad lacks literary merit, but the people, good
subjects all of Queen Elizabeth, could sing with great feeling
of the pitiful or hair-raising experiences caused by the wicked
and unfeeling Bonner (the conservative Bishop of London;
he was the villain of the ballad rather than Gardiner), and
could end in a burst of triumph with the words of the last
stanza:

For when Queen Mary was deceas'd,
The Duchess home returned again,

Who was of sorrow quite released
By Queen Elizabeth's happy reign,

Whose Godly life and Piety

We may praise continually.

Still later, early in the seventeenth century, a play about the
duchess's experiences was written and produced at the
Fortune Theatre in Cripplegate. 4 Stories dealing with the
lives of actual people appealed strongly to the populace and
when a life contained as much in the way of adventure as did
Catherine's, it was almost made to order for the writers of
plays and ballads. It is doubtful, however, whether either the
play or the verses would ever have appealed very much to
Catherine and Richard Bertie.

129

VIII

HOME PROBLEMS

A dawn on November lyth, 1558, Queen Mary died,
and on that same day Parliament proclaimed her half-
sister, Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England. Elizabeth
held her first Council meeting three days later, in the hall in
the palace at Hatfield. At that meeting, Elizabeth appointed
William Cecil, Catherine of Suffolk's old friend, to be her
Principal Secretary and a Privy Councillor, saying to him:

This judgement I have of you that you will not be cor-
rupted by any manner of gift and that you will be faith-
ful to the state; and that without respect of my private
will you will give me that counsel which you think best
and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared
to me of secrecy you shall show it to myself only. And
assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein
and therefore I charge you.

Queen Elizabeth never had any reason to change her
judgment of her first minister. He served her, and England,
with wisdom and with unswerving loyalty for the next
forty years. She could, and did, rail at him on occasion. She
could, and sometimes did, refuse to act according to his
counsel. But she never doubted his motives. She knew that
among all the glittering Court this wise and quiet man was
motivated only by what he believed was for her good and
for the good of England. He was never the courtier, never

130

HOME PROBLEMS

one of her 'favourites', never emotional or self-seeking; he
lived for his great love England and for England's
queen. And although Elizabeth Tudor was often exasperating,
contradictory, difficult, capricious, William Cecil recognized
her as a great woman and a great queen, and he spent the last
forty years of his life helping her to realize her great destiny.
One of the very qualities in William Cecil which made
Elizabeth Tudor listen to his counsel and often be guided by
it was the quality which provoked Catherine of Suffolk and
made her scold him and berate him. He never pushed his own
ideas and beliefs beyond the point to which he believed the
queen would go. Cecil was a Protestant; he had conformed
during Mary's reign, had stayed in England rather than go
into exile for his religion. He had gone to mass and had made
the outward signs of adherence to Roman Catholicism. Since
he had elected to remain in England, he had been obliged to
do that to keep his freedom, but he had done it without
conviction. He was Protestant, and his wife, Mildred, was an
ardent Protestant; and he knew that by birth and back-
ground, if for no other reason, Elizabeth would be Protestant,
However, he recognized in the queen an inherent liking for
the forms and symbols of the old religion and an instinctive
distrust of the more radical Puritans, and he realized that if he
were to push her too fast or too hard in the direction of non-
conformity, the result might easily be merely to strengthen
her conservatism. And so he was cautious and discreet, and
the queen trusted his judgment and was influenced by it; and
Catherine of Suffolk, whose quick tongue and ardent nature
made her speak out forcefully for her belief, whether or not
always wisely, was annoyed and irritated with him.

Catherine and Richard Bertie heard of Mary's death and of
Elizabeth's accession before the end of the year. The duchess

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

is said to have sent New Year's gifts to the new queen 'a
cushion all over richly embroidered and set with pearls, and
the book of Ecclesiasticus, covered with purple velvet
garnished and clasped with silver and gilt'. On January 28th
she wrote to the queen to felicitate her on her accession :

The Almighty and everloving God so endow your
Majesty with His spirit that it may be said of you as of
His prophet David, 'He hath found one after His own
heart/ Your Majesty I know well knoweth how most
naturally all creatures embrace liberty and fly servitude,
but many most specially because God of His fore-
conceived kindness created him thereunto ... wherefore
now is our season if ever any were to say after Zakkery,
blessed be the Lord God of Israel which hath visited and
delivered your Majesty, and by you us, His and your
miserable afflicted subjects. For if the Israelites found joy
in their Deborah, how much more we English in our
Elizabeth ... First your Majesty hath great cause to praise
God that it pleased Him to appoint you the means
whereby He showeth forth His great mercy... It is
comfort ... to all your subjects that you do the will of
Him that hath raised you up spite of His and your
enemies ... And though I have my portion of gladness
equal with the rest, yet I can not choose but increase it
with remembrance of your gracious goodness towards me
in times past, in the hope of continuance of the same in
time to come. Only I greatly wait and pray to the
Almighty to consummate this consolation, giving me a
prosperous journey, and rejoice personally to see your
Majesty and to rejoice together with my countryfolk
and to sing our songs to the Lord in our native land. 1

132

HOME PROBLEMS

Catherine of Suffolk did not return to England until late
in the spring of 1559, and before she came home she got news
from England which was disturbing to her forthright and
strongly Protestant nature, news that seemed to indicate that
Protestantism was not being pushed forward in England
with the single-minded vigour that she wished for and
expected. On March 4th she wrote to William Cecil, in
answer to a letter from him or from his wife, Lady Mildred.
One wishes that letter had been preserved; as it is, one can
only guess at what it must have said from the duchess's
answer :

The hand within the letter seemeth to be my Lady
your wife's, the superscription Sir William Cecil's; but
howsoever it be it is all one, yea, and so I would to God
all our whole nation were likewise one in Jesus Christ
as behooveth. Nay, if there be but eleven about her
Majesty's person that savor one thing in Him she is happy
and the whole realm. But alack, the report is otherwise,
which is an intolerable heaviness to such as love God
and her; yea, and that such as should rather be spurred
holdeth her Majesty of her own good inclination,
running most back, among which you are specially
named. Wherefore, for the love I bear you I cannot
forbear to write it; and if it shall please you to heed a
simple woman's mind. Undoubtedly the greatest
wisdom is not to be too wise, which, of all others, you
should by experience chieflyest know. For if there were
anything whereby that good duke, your old master,
deserved and felt the heavy stroke of God, what is there
else whereof men may accuse him but only that when
God had placed him to set forth His glory (which yet of

133

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

himself he was always ready to do) but being still
plucked by the sleeve of [by] worldly friends, for this
worldly respect or that, in fine gave over his hot zeal to
set forth God's true religion as he had most nobly begun,
and turning him to follow such worldly devices, you
can as well as I tell what came of it: the duke lost all that
he sought to keep, with his head to boot, and his
counsellors slipped their collars, turned their coats and
hath served since to play their parts in many other
matters. But [to] beware in time is good, for though
God wink at them He sleepeth not and will undoubtedly
at length pay such turncoats home. Wherefore I am
forced to say with the prophet Elie, how long halt ye
between two opinions ? ... If the Mass be good, tarry not
to follow it nor take from it no part of that honour
which the last queen, with her notable stoutness, brought
it to and left in (wherein she deserved immortal praise
seeing she was so persuaded that it was good) but if you
be not so persuaded, alas, who should move the Queen's
Majesty to honour it with her presence, or any of her
counsellors? Well, it is so reported here that her Majesty
tarried but the Gospel and so departed. I pray God that
no part of that report were true, for in conscience there
is few of you that can excuse yourselves but that you
know there is no part of it good after that sort as they
use it; for the very Gospel there read is unprofitable or
rather an occasion of falling to the multitude which,
hearing it and not understanding it, taketh it rather for
some holy charm than any other thing. Saints' faces may
in Lent be covered (and it were good they were always
so) but where Christ is He is bare faced, and specially
where He hath openly preached at noon days ... To

134

HOME PROBLEMS

build surely is first to lay the sure cornerstone, today and
not tomorrow; there is no exception by man's law
that may serve against God's.

There is no fear of innovation 'in restoring old good
laws and repealing new evil, but it is to be feared men
have so long worn the Gospel slopewise that they will
not gladly have it again straight to their legs. Christ's
plain coat without a seam is fairer to the older eyes than
all the jaggs of Germany; this I say for that it is also said
here that certain Dutchers should commend to us the
confession of Augsberg as they did to the Poles, where it
was answered by a wise counsellor [that] neither
Augsberg neither Rome were their ruler but Christ,
who hath left His Gospel behind Him a rule sufficient
and only to be followed. Thus write I after my old
manner, which if I persuade you, take it as thankfully
and friendly as I mean it; then I will say to you as my
father Larimer was wont to say to me, I will be bold to
write to you another time as I hear and what I think;
and if not I shall hold my peace and pray God amend it
to Him. With my hearty prayer that He will so assist
you with His grace that you may the first and only seek
Him as His eldest and chosen vessel. And so I leave both
you and your wife, resting as ready to do you both
pleasure if I were able as willing to serve you. With my
hearty commendations, from our house of Crossen, the
fourth of March.

So far yours as you are God's. 2

There was no temporizing about Catherine of Suffolk.
She knew what she believed and she stood, frankly and with-
out equivocation, for her belief. She could never understand

135

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

the attitude of those who felt that a little was better than
nothing, those who made haste slowly, looking at both sides
of the question and proceeding with caution. While dia-
metrically opposed to Mary's belief, Catherine could under-
stand the Catholic queen's forthright procedure in matters
religious, could understand and even commend it, because
Mary was acting according to what she really believed.
Elizabeth was something else again. By birth and by all the
circumstances of her youth she was committed to Protestant-
ism; from the Roman Catholic point of view she was a
bastard, unfit and unsuitable to be the Queen of England.
During Mary's reign, she had become a symbol of the re-
formed religion to all those whose sympathies lay in that
direction; she had conformed, to be sure, had accepted Mary's
establishment; but so, too, had all the Protestant gentry who
had not fled overseas. In Mary's reign, to fail to conform was
to court certain disaster. But when Elizabeth came to the
throne of England, the English Protestants rejoiced, and the
more zealous ones looked forward to strong and immediate
support from their queen. When they saw that Elizabeth
Tudor's Protestantism was not so strong or so outspoken as
they had expected, people like Catherine of Suffolk were
bitterly disappointed.

Elizabeth chose for her councillors men who leaned to-
wards the Protestant position. They were, for the most part,
men like William Cecil, who had accepted and conformed to
Catholicism under Mary. Although they were Protestants,
they were not zealots, not ardent Puritans, but anti-Roman,
anti-Spanish, anti anything that was not pure English.
What had rankled most in the minds of a great many
Englishmen had been not so much Mary's way of worship-
ping her God as her Spanish marriage, her deference to

136

HOME PROBLEMS

persons and forces not English to Spain, to Rome, to
foreigners. Elizabeth Tudor was as English as the land itself.
And she surrounded herself with men who were equally
English. Protestants themselves, her advisers recognized, as
did the queen, that her best and most dependable friends were
Protestants, both at home and abroad. But they recom-
mended caution. In a document entitled The Distresses
of the Commonwealth, endorsed A. Waad (Armagail
Waad, a Privy Councillor in Edward's reign), the writer
said:

It requireth great cunning and circumspection ... to
reform religion ... so would I wish that you would
proceed to the reformation having respect to quiet at
home, the affairs you have on hand with foreign princes,
the greatness of the pope and how dangerous it is to
make alteration in religion, specially in the beginning of a
prince's reign. Glasses with small necks, if you pour into
them any liquor suddenly or violently, will not be so
filled ... Howbeit, if you instill water into them by a
little and little they are soon replenished. 3

This was the position taken by the queen's advisers, how-
ever strongly they might feel personally. Even as staunch a
Protestant as Nicholas Throgmorton, a man whose sympathy
for the reformed religion was clear-cut and strong, recom-
mended caution. They all recognized the number and com-
plexity of the problems facing the young queen; they
realized that her problems, both at home and abroad, would
be still further complicated if, at the very outset of her reign,
she should take too strong a stand for immediate overthrow
of the old religion in favour of the new.

Catherine of Suffolk was dismayed. With her own forth-

137

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Tightness and singleness of purpose, she had assumed that
when Elizabeth came to the throne, Protestantism would be
established instantly, overnight as it were; that the mass
would be immediately abolished, along with the confes-
sional and all the trappings of popery. "When this did not
happen, she was shocked and astonished. Catherine had all
the zeal of which the most ardent missionary is made. It was
impossible for her to see that the ordinary people in England,
the yeomen and their families, found comfort in the old
forms, in the ritual of the service, the priest in his familiar
vestments who christened them and married and buried
them; she could not see that these people were not concerned
about a pope in Rome or what he stood for, but that to take
from them, abruptly, the forms, the outward and visible
signs, to which they were accustomed, could cause great
distress and even perhaps civil disturbance. So much for
home. As for the foreign problem, the Pope, and relations
with Spain and with France, these gave Catherine not a
moment's concern. She saw life in clear, unshaded blacks and
whites, never in greys. For her, what was right was to be
supported, fought for and established without hesitation or
delay; what was wrong was to be done away with equally
promptly. She could never understand or condone what
seemed to her to be the irresolute position of the queen's
Councillors; she could neither understand nor remain quiet
at the attitude of her old friend, William Cecil an attitude
which she regarded as shockingly hesitant and for which she
rebuked him sharply. Her rebukes were not altogether
deserved. Cecil worked hard for the Elizabethan religious
settlement, he spent time and energy on the establishment of
the English Church. But he knew the problems confronting
England, and he knew his royal mistress, her brilliance and

138

HOME PROBLEMS

ability, her stubbornness and waywardness. He recognized
also the strong vein of orthodoxy in Protestant Elizabeth
Tudor, and the fact that too great pressure on her to lean to
the left could quite easily cause her to lean strongly to the
right. Elizabeth never in her life quite trusted the zealots or
the radical Protestants ; nor did she like or approve of their
forms of worship. For one thing, they were far too casual for
her. She could not approve of a clergyman marrying, or
living as other men lived; and as for the lack of vestments, or
the democratic way in which the churches were governed
she neither could nor wished to understand such procedures.
However, Elizabeth never did swing dangerously far to the
right, and this was in no small part due to the wise and
temporate counsel and to the restraint of her minister and
principal secretary, William Cecil.

Catherine and Richard Bertie and their children came
home to England in the summer of 1559. On August 2nd
of that year, letters of denization were passed for their
young son, Peregrine, 4 and at about the same time, the
queen issued a warrant to the Lord Treasurer and the Barons
of the Exchequer to release Catherine Duchess of Suffolk and
Richard Bertie, her husband, from all payments on account
of lands, etc., seized by Queen Mary, and to restore to them
all their lands, goods and other possessions. 5 Catherine and
her husband were not homeless, therefore, nor were they
saddled with debts to the Crown upon their return to their
homeland. And so, after more than four years of exile,
Catherine came home to Grimsthorpe, the place she loved
better than any other in the world.

139

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Many changes had taken place in England during the
years of Catherine's exile, changes in her own family and
among her close friends. Her greatest loss was of course her
dear friend, Hugh Latimer, who had been in prison when she
left England and had finally been burned for heresy in the
autumn of 1555. Then, Catherine's stepdaughter, Frances,
the wife of Henry Grey (who had been named Duke of
Suffolk in 1551 and had been executed in 1554 for his
complicity in the Lady Jane Grey plot), had married her
Master of the Horse, Adrian Stokes, shortly after her
husband's death. Frances was unwell at the time of her step-
mother's return to England. She died the following Novem-
ber, and Catherine was the chief mourner at her funeral on
December 3rd, 1559. Frances had had three daughters; the
eldest, the Lady Jane Grey, had been beheaded before
Catherine had left the country, but the two younger
daughters, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary, had lived on at
Court, where they were maids of honour to the queen when
Catherine came home to England. They were not popular
with Elizabeth. Possibly the fact that Elizabeth's father, as
well as her brother, had designated the descendants of
Henry's sister Mary as successors to the throne after Henry's
own daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, had much to do with
Elizabeth's antipathy towards these two young women who
were Mary's granddaughters and direct descendants. How-
ever, the relationship was amicable, on the surface at least,
until the summer of 1561, when it became very obvious that
Lady Catherine was pregnant. She had married, secretly, the
young Earl of Hertford, son of the Lord Protector Somerset.
They had been in love for some time, and they had hoped to
get the queen's consent to their marriage, in 1559, through
the intervention of Lady Catherine's mother. But Frances's

140

HOME PROBLEMS

illness made it impossible for lier to intercede for them, and
with her death they had to look elsewhere for help. There is a
story, no doubt true, that the young people turned to
Catherine of Suffolk when it became impossible for Frances
to assist them. The duchess, according to the story, was
sympathetic, but emphasized the necessity of obtaining the
queen's consent before any marriage could take place. A
letter was prepared, and approved by the duchess, but at the
last moment Hertford lost his courage and did not deliver the
letter to the queen, and the young couple were married in
secret. If in fact Lady Catherine and Hertford did go to the
duchess for help, she would certainly have insisted that they
must get Queen Elizabeth's approval to any marriage.
Catherine of Suffolk had only recently returned to England,
She may not yet have realized Elizabeth's antipathy to the
descendants of her aunt Mary of Suffolk, but the duchess was
very well aware of the fact that by an Act of 1536 it was
treason for one of the blood royal to marry without the
consent of the sovereign, and she would never have been a
party to any secret marriage for Catherine Grey.

Young Hertford and Lady Catherine Grey were married in
November or December of 1560, and late the following
spring, Hertford went to Paris in the company of William
Cecil's son, Thomas. Not long after he had left the country
his bride's pregnancy became a matter of comment, and the
queen learned of their marriage. Elizabeth was outraged. She
clapped Lady Catherine into the Tower and her husband
after her, as soon as he got back to England, about a month
later. By early September, both young people were prisoners
in the Tower and there, on the 24th, their first child, a son,
Edward, was born. The news of his birth infuriated the queen
still further. Orders were given that there was to be no

141

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

contact at all between Lady Catherine and her husband; but
the orders were not carried out, for a year and a half later,
still in the Tower, Lady Catherine gave birth to a second son,
Thomas. This was almost the end of any contact between the
young couple. On the 2ist of the following August, 1564, the
queen gave orders that, because of the plague in London,
they should both be removed, the Lady Catherine to the
custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, in Pirgo, Essex, and
Hertford to his mother's house at Hanworth in Middlesex.
The Lady Catherine and her husband never saw one another
again. Upon the death of Lord John Grey, Catherine was sent
to a succession of custodians ; she died in the house of Sir
William Hopton in January of 1568. After her death, her
husband no longer constituted a threat to the throne, and
he was released.

Only a short time, therefore, after her return to her home-
land, Catherine of Suffolk had to see a second grandchild
imprisoned. They were not of her blood, the Grey sisters, but
she had watched them grow up into womanhood, they were
dear to her and their fate was important to the duchess.
Death had intervened to spare Frances Brandon from seeing
a second daughter sent to the Tower, but Catherine of
Suffolk had to watch while all three of the granddaughters of
her husband, the duke, were publicly disgraced.

Lady Mary, the third of the daughters, touched Catherine's
own life most closely, although Mary herself was probably
less close to the duchess than either of her sisters had been,
certainly less close than the Lady Jane had been. In 1565, the
Lady Mary Grey was still one of the queen's maids in waiting.
In August of that year it became known that she had been
secretly married to Thomas Keys, the queen's sergeant porter.
It was a strange match; Keys, a widower with several

142

HOME PROBLEMS

children, was a huge man he had been chosen for his
place because of his immense size while Lady Mary was so
tiny as to seem almost dwarf-like. Sir William Cecil, writing
to Sir Thomas Smith on August 2ist, said:

Here is an unhappy chance and monstrous. The sergeant
porter, being the biggest gentleman in the Court, hath
married secretly the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the
Court. They are committed to several prisons. The
offence is very great.

Once again Elizabeth was infuriated. Moreover, she was
not going to take any chances by sending the young couple
to the Tower and having them have children there. She sent
Thomas Keys promptly to the Fleet, the prison between
Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street. For some reason, however,
Lady Mary was not put in prison at all, but was placed in the
custody of William Hawtrey at Chequers, in Buckingham-
shire. She stayed there for two years, at the end of which
time she was transferred to the custody of Catherine of
Suffolk.

The change took place in August of 1567. This was a
charge which the duchess did not seek, and one which caused
her considerable embarrassment and trouble. Lady Mary, in
pitiful condition, was delivered into Catherine's care at the
Minories, a London house which had belonged to Lady
Mary's sister Catherine. On August pth, from Greenwich,
the duchess wrote a desperate letter to Sir William Cecil,
begging his help in the problem:

According to the Queen's commandment, on Friday at
night last, Mr. Hawtrey brought my Lady Mary to the

143

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Minories to me even as I was appointed to have gone to
Grimsthorpe ... The truth is, I am so unprovided of stuff
here myself as at the Minories I borrow of my Lady
Eleanor and here of Mistress Sheffield; for all the stuff
that I had left me when I came from the other side of the
sea, and all that I have since provided for and gotten
together will not sufficiently furnish our houses in
Lincolnshire ... I was fain to declare the same lack of
stuff to Mr. Hawtrey, praying that my Lady's stuff
might come before her, for the dressing up of her
chamber. But would God you had seen what stuff it is !
He before told me that she occupied his and none of her
own, and now I see it I believe him well. I am sorry that
I am not so well stowed for her as he was, but am com-
pelled to borrow it from my friends in the town. She
hath nothing but an old livery feather bed, all too torn
and full of patches, without either bolster or counter-
pane but two old pillows, the one longer than the other,
an old quilt of silk so torn as the cotton of it comes out,
such a little pitious canopy of red sarsonet as were scant
good enough to hang over some secret stool, and two
little pieces of old, old hangings, both of them not
seven yards broad. Wherefore I pray you heartily con-
sider of this, and if you shall think it meet, be a mean for
her to the Queen's Majesty that she might have the
furniture of one chamber for herself and her maid,
and she and I will play the good housewifes and make
shift with her old bed for her man. Also I would if I
durst beg further some old silver pots to fetch her drink
in, and two little cups to drink in, one for beer another
for wine. A basin and an ewer I fear were too much, but
all these things she lacks and were meet she had, and hath

144

HOME PROBLEMS

nothing in this world. And truly, if I were able to give
it her, she should never trouble her Majesty for it; but
look ye, what it shall please her Majesty to appoint for
her shall be always ready to be delivered in as good case
as by her wearing of it, it shall be left, whensoever it shall
please her Majesty to call for it. I hope she will do well
hereafter, for notwithstanding that I am sure she is now
glad to be with me, yet I assure you she is otherwise, not
only in conscience but in very deed, so sad and ashamed
of her fault (I think it is because she saw me not since
before) so that I am not yet sure she can get her to eat,
in all that she hath eaten now these two days not so much
as a chicken's leg. She makes me even afraid of [for] her,
and therefore I will be the gladder for them. I think a
little comfort would do well. 6

It was a pathetic letter, a pitiful situation. There is no
record of how Cecil responded to the duchess's request, or
whether he was able to induce the queen to contribute any-
thing for poor little Lady Mary's comfort. Elizabeth's
attitude towards both of the sisters had been far from
friendly, even when they were living in Court as her maids
in waiting. When they flouted her authority and married
without her consent, her anger was very great indeed, and
she wished only to have them shut up where they could do
no harm or inconvenience to her or to anyone, always
excepting the inconvenience to their custodians. In any case,
Lady Mary lived in the custody of the duchess for the next
two years; in 1569 she was removed to the charge of Sir
Thomas Gresham, who also wrote periodic letters to Cecil
asking to be relieved of the burden. She and her husband
were never allowed to see one another again. Keys died in

145

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

1571, and Lady Mary in 1578. Her life, and the lives of her
sisters, had been pitiful ones, and Catherine of Suffolk,
although she felt ill equipped to take any responsibility for
upkeep, was nevertheless sad at the thought of the three
granddaughters of her first husband.

146

GRIMSTHORPE

their return from overseas, Catherine of Suffolk
ZA and her husband maintained two homes in England,
2. jLGrimsthorpe in Lincolnshire, and the Barbican, later
called Willoughby House, in London. There were also
smaller places, like Eresby near Spilsby in the eastern part of
the county of Lincoln, which had come to Catherine as part
of her inheritance from her father and which they kept up
and visited occasionally; but Grimsthorpe and the Barbican
were the places where they lived. They stayed in London for
part of the winter months, or when they had to be there for
one reason or another, and at times one or both of them
stayed for a while at Court at Greenwich, but for the most
part, from early spring to late autumn, they were in the
country, and usually they managed to be there for Christmas.
Grimsthorpe was still the place the duchess loved best of
all. Sadness had been her companion there, and joy too. There
she had spent the dark days after the death of her two sons,
Henry and Charles Brandon, and there she had married her
second husband, Richard Bertie. The house was full of
associations and memories. Henry VIII had visited there,
walked in the gardens, held Privy Council meetings in the
great hall; Latimer had preached in the private chapel his
great sermons on the Lord's Prayer, had paced up and down
the long passages, the duchess at his side, talking with her

147

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

about the religion and the belief that had come to be so vital
a part of her life. Her young boys, Henry and Charles, had
romped through the great house and played under the tall
oak trees in the park as her two younger children, Peregrine
and Susan, were now doing; and not too far away for visiting
back and forth were good friends : the Cecils and the Mild-
mays a few miles south, the Rutlands a little to the north-
west, and others round about. Life at Grimsthorpe was
pleasant and peaceful for Catherine, with family and friends,
and with the country folk around her, loving and respecting
her. She had spent much time among these people, back in
Edward's reign, talking with them about the New Religion,
seeing to it that the country folk were ministered to, that each
little church had its own English Bible, that the people were
taught the Gospel and the Ten Commandments and the
Lord's Prayer, not in Latin but in their own language.
Catherine was happy to be back in this county that she loved,
where, given her choice, she would always stay.

The Berries lived comfortably, in considerable state. The
household was a large one: account books which included
virtually every aspect of their life were kept, and those which
survive, covering a period of about two years, give a picture
of a noble family living in the country pleasantly and easily.
The books 1 begin:

Such as daily remain in the household of the right
worshipful Master Richard Bertie, Esquire, and the right
honourable Lady Catherine duchess of Suffolk, his wife,
hereafter followeth, with their quarterly wages. Anno
1560.

My Master

My Lady's Grace

148

GRIMSTHORPE

The Lady Elinor (daughter of the duke of Suffolk) 2
Master Peregrine
Mistress Susan.

Then come a number of women's names, probably the
waiting-women of the household, Mrs Turpine, Mrs Mary
Chamberlain, Mrs Jane Whittington, Mrs Anne Clark, Mrs
Dorothy Turke, Mrs Ashby, Mrs Mary Hall, little Frances,
Ann Cannock, Mrs Alice Hatch. Except for little Frances and
Ann Cannock, probably children of members of the house-
hold, all of these women were paid 135, 4d. the quarter,
which appears to have been about the average wage.

Mr Coverdale, the preacher (he may have been a relative
of Miles Coverdale, the translator of the Bible), got 5 the
quarter; the cofferer, i.e. treasurer, got 25$. Mr Naunton,
Master of the Horse, was paid 135. 4d., as were the gentlemen
ushers, the gentlemen waiters, the clerk of the kitchen, the
clerk of provisions. The yeomen of the cellar, the butler,
the pander, the yeomen of the wardrobe, all got los. the
quarter. Two cooks were paid 255. each, and grooms of the
table received 155. One gardener was paid 145. 4d., while
two were paid 155. each. The number of the household listed,
exclusive of the family, comes to one hundred.

After the list of personnel, the accounts are divided into
categories, starting in October of 1560. The first heading is
'The Wardrobe of Robes', and includes such entries as:

October, 1560.

To my Lady's Grace, for a winter gown in the allowance
of a bill signed with her own hand ^5- I 3s.

For bombassy [padding] for my Master's satin
doublet I 2S -

149

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

To Anthony Berwick for so much money by him paid
for 5 yards of frysian for my Master's jerkin and slippers,
at 2s. the yard ios.

April, 1561.

10 ounces of Granado silk for my Master's shirts, 245. 8d.

February, 1562.

A pair of Valencia gloves for my Master lod.

A hat of thrummed silk, garnished, and a band of
gold, for my master at his coming to Grimsthorpe, i8s.

In November of 1561 there was an item of .28 Tor silks
taken by my Master according to a bill in my Master's hand' ;
and in December, material for 'a black velvet gown for her
Grace', cost .5. In January, 1562, the duchess paid ys. for
'fine Holland for ruffs and borders for my Master's shirts'.
And so it went. Bertie and Catherine dressed well Bertie
especially appears to have been very particular about his
dress. The finest materials, silk, satin and velvet, Holland linen
and sheer lawn, went into their clothes; soft furs kept them
warm in winter, sable and coney and squirrel. Little Susan
had a dress of crimson satin, and a caul of gold work held
her hair.

There were occasions, once in a while, when they paid
only part of a bill at one time, as in November 1561, when
they paid to Mr Bland, a skinner, .14, 'in part' for furs for a
gown for Richard Bertie; and again in June of 1562, when
they paid Clement Newce, a mercer, .60, in part payment
of a bill of 178. ys. 6d., for 'sundry silks ... for my Master,
her Grace, the children and their servants'. But this did not
happen often, and there is no reason to believe that Bertie
and the duchess did not pay their bills, or that they were
really hard pressed to do so. The expenses for clothes were

150

GRIMSTHORPE

heavy, however. In addition to their own apparel and their
children's, there was clothing or livery for the members of
the household, for which the Berries of course had to pay.
In April 1561, the women of the household, Mrs Turpine,
Mrs Mary Chamberlain and the rest, eight in all, were paid a
total of ^6. 28. 8d. Tor velvet to gard [trim] their livery
gowns'; in March 1562, the sum of 3 was paid for Mr
Coverdale's livery. Such items run all through the accounts.

Shoes were a recurrent expense, and hose. Sixteenth-
century children were no different from their twentieth-
century brothers and sisters in their propensity for wearing
out or outgrowing shoes and stockings, and Catherine and
Richard Bertie bought footwear, as well as all other clothing,
not only for their own two active children, but also for the
'children of honour', nine boys and one little girl, who lived
in the household, apparently as companions for Peregrine
and Susan in lessons and in play. There are items for shoes
practically every month: 'shoes for George Sebastian and
George Adams, 2od.' and 'shoes for John Turpin, yd.'. In
March 1561 there were bought 'two pair of shoes for Pere-
grine, one for Susan, one for Richard Hall, yd. the pair', and
in April Susan had another, better, pair which cost isd.

The actual making of the clothes was done almost entirely
at home, the expenses noted are for materials for gowns,
robes, shirts, hose, and there were also items such as thread
and buttons, materials for linings what the modern dress-
maker or tailor would call sundries.

The next category in the household accounts is headed
'Wardrobe of Beds'. The best beds, those for the family and
probably those for the higher echelon of the household,
were featherbeds, of course. These were kept sweet and
fluffy by 'driving' - forcing a current of fresh air through the

151

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

feathers. One John Bee of Lincoln, and one Richard Thomp-
son, were featherbed drivers, and they, particularly John Bee,
were in frequent attendance at Grimsthorpe. The cost for
driving a featherbed was about 2s. Now and then an up-
holsterer would come to make new beds, to sew up the ticks
and fill them with feathers. Ticking and feathers were both
purchased: one featherbed tick cost ids. in December 1560.
The kitchen servants slept on straw beds, under coverlets of
'Irish rogge' (a coarse frieze), which cost yd. the yard;
nineteen yards of 'white blanket' for coverings for the family
cost 10 2s. pd., or over los. the yard. In November 1561,*
an item appears for 'thirteen mats to lay under beds' at lid.
each. These may have been for the purpose of protecting the
sleepers from the chill coming up from the stone floor, or they
may have been simply to protect the featherbeds themselves.

Under the heading 'Wardrobe of Beds' there are also such
items as rushes for floors, candles and torches (these for the
bedrooms; candles also appear later under the heading
'chaundry'), and house-cleaning. In March of 1562, 'cleaning
the house at Grimsthorpe' cost 2s. 8d. Obviously those who
worked at such menial tasks as scrubbing and cleaning were
paid a mere pittance. Grimsthorpe was a huge house, with
halls which ran the length of each side of the quadrangle and
numberless rooms opening off the long corridors, living
rooms, dining rooms, rooms for entertaining on the ground
floor, bedrooms and retiring rooms above; the 'forty maids
with forty mops' of Alice in Wonderland would have to work
long and hard to give it a real spring-cleaning.

The next heading, 'Gifts and Rewards', covers a multitude
of payments, not only such items as New Year's gifts, and
rewards for favours done, but also all kinds of tipping, pay-
ment to the many travelling players and musicians who

152

GRIMSTHORPE

entertained the Berties and their household, even payment of
the doctor who attended members of the household: *to
William Cooke of Stamford, surgeon, when my Lady's
Grace was sick the second day, ios.' and to a 'bone-setter ...
for the setting in of two joints which were out in young
Jerves' ankle, 3S. 4d/

The various items listed under this heading of * Gifts and
Rewards', taken all together, give a picture of the pleasant
life lived by Catherine and Richard Bertie in the country.
Together they rode horseback, along the winding lanes and
over the fields, giving a penny for his help to the man who
hastened to open a 'gappe' in the hedge for them to pass
through. They visited and were visited by their neighbours;
in September 1562 they were at the Cecils', where they
tipped the servants 6s. 4d.; in September of 1562 they were
at the house of Sir Walter Mildmay in Northamptonshire,
where Bertie did some hunting (they tipped two keepers 125.
in addition to the 3s. 4d. which they gave to the yeoman of
the wardrobe), and from there they went to visit the Earl of
Rutland at Belvoir Castle in the lovely wooded county of
Leicestershire, where, among the various forms of enter-
tainment provided, there was a man who played on the lute
so beautifully that they singled him out for special notice and
gave him 6s. when bestowing the customary end-of-visit
gratuities (which amounted to 405.) .-On the ride back home
from Lord Rutland's, they were caught in a sudden late-
summer downpour, and stopped in a house on the wayside
while Catherine got dried before the fire; they gave the
woman of the house I2d. for her hospitality.

The months of December and January were a particularly
costly time for gifts, since New Year's Day was the customary
time for giving. In December, 1561, for example, they paid

153

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

14. i os. to one David Suls for a New Year's present for the
queen, and Tor extra work and extra gold', because the piece
was 'not well wrought', they paid an additional .4. 148. 8d.
And in January 1562, they made still further payments of
more than ^5 for a gold chain for the same gift. They gave
Peregrine and Susan 2OS. each for their New Year's gifts,
and they gave varying amounts, usually a number of shillings,
to the members of the household.

Payments of gifts, or fees, to travelling players and other
entertainers went on throughout the year. In the winter-
time, the great house had ample space for entertainers, and
room not only for the household but for neighbours, too, to
come and witness the performances ; while in the summer the
gardens, with their background of tree trunks and green
leaves, made a natural theatre. In summer and in winter when
the family was there, there was much gaiety at Grimsthorpe.
In January 1561, musicians from Godmanchester (about
forty miles away in Huntingdonshire) performed at Grims-
thorpe and were paid 2os. Other items in the same month
were:

To the players the first day for my Master los.

To the players for my Lady's Grace 5s.

To George the trumpeter, for my Master 35. 4d.

To two violins for my Master 3s. 4d.

In February:

To one which played the hobby horse before my
Master and my Lady's Grace 6s. 8d.

In March the waits of Lincoln were given 2od. for their
entertainment; in July, a group of travelling players was paid
13$. 4d., and later in the same month, 'Goods, the master of

154

GRIMSTHORPE

fence and his company ... played before her Grace' and they
also were paid 135. 4d. In August, puppeteers came, and
stayed two nights to perform. And so it went on: in July of
1562, the queen's players performed at Grimsthorpe for 20$.,
and again the waits of Lincoln came (they entertained the
household frequently). In the same month, Mr Naunton, the
duchess's Master of the Horse, was married (he may have
been a distant kinsman, for in some of her letters the duchess
referred to him as 'cousin Naunton') ; Bertie and the duchess
gave him ^6 'to buy a gown of grogram and a doublet of
satin against his marriage', and they paid a juggler los. for
performing at the wedding festivities.

There were gifts, or rewards, too, to people who did small
favours, servants of friends who delivered presents, and the
like:

To one which brought a fresh salmon in present from
Mr. William Sutton 2d.

A poor man who came to the gate which had his house
burnt, by my Master's commandment pd.

To Mr. Goddall's man which brought a basket of pears
in present 4d.

To one of Morton in recompense of a cow which the
hounds killed 6s.

To a servant of Lord Clinton's which brought a doe
in present 5 s *

To certain women of Spilsby which bestowed wine
and cakes upon Mr. Peregrine and Mistress Susan I2d.
To Mr. Peregrine, Mistress Susan and the rest, by her
Grace, to buy them fayrings of a peddler at the gate 2s.

Catherine or Richard Bertie, or their children, often stood as
godparents at local christenings, for example:

155

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

To the christening of John Persons' child, my Master
being godfather by his deputy, to the child, 2s., to the
midwife, 6d. 2s. 6d.

To Paske's wife, when my Master christened her child 55.
To the christening of Mr. Francis Harrington's child
by Mistress Susan 3s. 4d.

To the christening of Archibald's child by Mr. Peregrine
and Mistress Susan, 245., and to the nurse and mid-
wife, 6s. 3 os.

and so on, one every month or so, throughout the year.

There are certain entries under the heading 'Gifts and
Rewards' which shed a somewhat surprising light upon some
customs of the day in cases of contagious disease, at least in
the households of the gentry. In the winter of 1561-2, when
the duchess was in London at the Barbican, she fell ill with
smallpox. She cannot have been very ill, for she enjoyed a
considerable amount of entertainment during her sickness.
She played cards; an entry in another section of the house-
hold accounts reads 'To my Lady in single pence, to play at
tables in her sickness, by my master's commandment, I2d.'
Moreover, visiting players came and performed before her
while she was ill: a Mr Rose and his daughter were paid
135. 6d. for doing so, and a servant of Lord Willoughby (a
cousin of the duchess) played and sang for 2od. Apparently
quarantine was not too rigidly observed; one wonders how
the members of her household and those who came in from
outside to entertain her felt about being so close to one with
smallpox, and how many of them caught the disease from
the duchess. In a letter to Cecil from Paris, in November
1562, Sir Thomas Smith, then ambassador to France, re-
marked that smallpox had Vexed England these two or three

156

GRIMSTHORPE

years'. Small wonder ! Later on in 1562, the queen herself fell
ill with it. She could not have caught it from the duchess,
who had it a year earlier, but it is scarcely surprising that
someone, whether actually suffering with the malady or
simply carrying the germs, finally gave it to the queen, who
was, as it happens, far more seriously ill than the duchess had
been a year before.

Dr Keyns, Tor his pains taken in the sickness of her Grace
and Lady Susan', was given a cup 'of silver all gilt' which
cost ^5. I4S., and for 'ministering medecine to her Grace for
the small pox', an Italian was paid 55.

'Works and Buildings' is the tide of the next category in
the household accounts. This included glaziers, slaters (for
the roofs), carpenters, sawyers, colliers, smiths, fellers of wood
for hedging and so forth; in other words, those who repaired
the house and kept it in condition. The expenses under this
heading varied, month by month, from a minimum of
about fy to a maximum of about ^20. It included work at
Grimsthorpe, of course, small repairs at Edenham, Eresby
and Bellais and quite a bit of work at the Barbican.

As its name implies, 'Husbandry' included sowing and
mowing, reaping and winnowing, at Grimsthorpe and at
Edenham and Scotelthorpe which adjoined it; making
ploughshares and scythes, felling wood for fires, making it
into bundles and bringing it in. It included also the care of the
cattle, in field and in barn, well and sick. It did not include
horses; they came later, under their own heading.

'Necessaries', the next category, seems to have been a sort
of catch-all for anything which did not fit easily under any
other heading. Under this heading, in January 1561, is the
entry: 'To Mr. Coverdale, for Eliot's dictionary, I2S., for
four Lilies grammars, 4s., for four Dialogues, 2S. 8d., for

157

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

four Aesop's Fables, 2s.' Mr Coverdale, besides being the
chaplain, appears to have been tutor to the children. In the
same January the sum of 3d. was paid out for 'birch for rods'
when the children at Grimsthorpe were naughty, they
were punished in the manner of the time.

There is also an item of 3d. for 'brown paper to stop crenies
in the chambers, her Grace being sick', and 2s. for 'meat for
the turkey cocks at the Barbican', and i6d. 'for flowers
brought to the Court', and other, unrelated, outlays. But the
most recurrent payment listed under 'Necessaries' is money
used, chiefly by Richard Bertie, for playing cards. Bertie
appears to have been an enthusiastic gambler for small
stakes. Starting in January 1561:

To my Master at cards the second day at night 2s.

To niy Master at cards the third day at night 2s.

To my Master at cards the sixth day afore noon 3s.

To my Master at cards that night 2s.

and so on, throughout the year. Sometimes the entry indi-
cates that Bertie was playing with friends at Grantham or
some other neighbouring town, sometimes in London; and
occasionally the entry reads 'to my Master at tables with her
Grace' (Bertie seems always to have lost to his wife : there is
no entry of money to her for playing with him!) ; but most
frequently the entry reads simply, 'to my Master at cards'.
These items are more numerous at the holiday season, from
Christmas till the end of January, than at other times,
although they appear all through the year; but even the
children, Peregrine and Susan, were given a few shillings 'to
play upon Christmas Day'. These entries for money for card-
playing and, in the summer months, for rovers a sort of
archery contest are particularly interesting in view of the

158

GRIMSTHORPE

fact that Richard Bertie and his wife were such strong sup-
porters of a religion which, less than a century later, was so
unalterably opposed to any form of card-playing or gamb-
ling. But at the beginning, Puritanism was concerned with
the Church itself, with promoting a simple form of worship,
and with the government of the Church; it was not until
later that the Puritans turned their attention to the social
activities of the people, and imposed upon their members the
sort of austerity associated in most minds with the term
Puritanism. Catherine and Richard Bertie were far from
austere. Their religion meant everything to them a warm,
loving religion, based upon faith in God and His love. They
worked hard among the people of the county to spread the
Gospel which meant so much to them, but, sure in their own
faith, they never found it necessary to shun the simple
pleasures that made their life full and happy.

'Bakehouse and Pantry' included flour, wheat, bread. The
items for wheat and yeast occur every month, and almost
every month appears 'butter for the baker'. In the country
the bread was made on the place, in the bakehouse, while it
appears that it may have been bought when the family were
in London. Also under this heading come utensils for cook-
ing, and trenchers for the table; one dozen silver-plate
trenchers cost ^26, and a basin and ewer *of silver fashion'

COSt I2S.

Under the heading 'Brewhouse and Budery' were malt
and hops, casks and payments to the cooper; there were
strong beer, at ys. the barrel, double beer at the same price,
and small beer for 45. 6d. a barrel. Beer was bought in large
quantities everyone drank it.

The 'Cellar' was kept stocked with various kinds of wine:
claret and Rhenish wine, bitter wormwood wine and sack,

159

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

and cordials with exotic names, Hippocras and Jubilate.
These were often transported from London to Boston by
sea freight, thence overland to Bourne and Grimsthorpe.
Frequently it was bought by the tun or by the hogshead,
sometimes by the gallon; six gallons and one bottle of worm-
wood wine cost los. lod. in July of 1561; in August five
quarts and one pint of sack came to 2s. pd. A good deal of
wine was drunk, and wine jelly was made; in December
1561, '5 quarts of claret wine to make jelly' cost only 2od.
Drinking vessels for the wine, often of pewter, also were
listed under the heading of 'cellar',

'Spicery, Chaundry [place for keeping candles] and
Laundry' were gathered together under one heading. The
spicery was heady with the odours of ginger and cinnamon,
cloves, mace, aniseed, cumin seed, pepper, mostly bought
from the grocer in London. Many of these were fairly
costly: a pound of cloves cost us., cinnamon was not much
less, IDS. 6d. a pound; mace was even more, 14$. for a pound,
while aniseed and cumin seed were much cheaper, i'4d. and
8d. a pound respectively. Ginger and pepper, in the middle
of the price range, cost 35. a pound. Alongside these more
exotic herbs, bunches of thyme and verbena, sage and lavender
and peppermint, all gathered from the herb gardens at
Grimsthorpe, hung in fragrant clusters to dry. In the spicery
also were biscuits and comfits, and sometimes marmalade. A
bill paid to 'Modie the grocer' in London, for such diverse
items as figs and raisins, castile soap and marmalade, in
March 1562, came to ^21. ips. 6d. In the Chaundry there
were torches and rush lights, candlewick and wax for making
candles, rosin, quarriers (large, square candles with a wick in
the middle), candle rods and sockets. For the laundry there
was soap, castile soap, sweet soap a barrel cost sos. and

1 60

GRIMSTHORPE

grey soap which came to I2ci. for four pounds. One item was
recurrent every month: washing pantry cloths, thirty-odd
dozen of them each month at 3d. the dozen.

The next heading was 'Kitchen*. The first thing which
strikes one in this listing is the amount of fish that was con-
sumed: herrings, white fish, ling; fresh fish and salt fish, and
salt for salting down fish. In October, 1560, eight hundred
salt fish were bought for ^66. 13$. 4d., and half a hundred
ling for 7; the next January six barrels of white herrings
cost 23$. 4<1. the barrel, and six barrels of red herrings cost
I2s. each. There was also meat, veal and mutton and pork
most commonly. The meat was mostly for the Master's table
and for the higher members of the household. At the lower
levels, fish was the regular fare. The major part of the kitchen
expenses was for fish and meat, but not all. Eggs were a
recurrent item; they were not bought regularly, but in
quantity. In March 1562, for example, 420 eggs were bought
at a cost of 5s. lod. ; and now and again oranges were bought,
which, surprisingly, were not very costly, 3$. lod. for four
hundred of them. The Berries got their coal in in the spring
and early summer, as soon as the roads were in condition for
hauling; sixteen loads and twenty-two sacks were delivered
at Grimsthorpe from April to June of 1562 (a load of coal was
thirty sacks and cost about 20s.). The coal is listed under
'Kitchen' in the accounts, and was probably used exclusively
for cooking ; in the cold weather, wood fires kept the house
as warm as it was ever kept, and added their glow to the
flickering light of candles and torches on winter nights.

The duchess and her husband travelled about a good deal.
The next section in the accounts is headed 'Journeying*, and
scarcely a month passed in which one or both of them did
not take a trip, whether long or short. They went to visit

161

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

friends in other parts of the country, and now and again they
went to see others of their manors; in August of 1561, for
instance, they travelled to the eastern part of Lincolnshire,
to Boston and to Eresby, a manor belonging to the duchess.
The cost of this trip was ^7. 6s. 4d. But the longest, and most
frequent, trip was to London, In December 1560, there
appears the entry:

To Harry Naunton for sums by him laid out for my
Master's journey to London ^ J 5- 3s. 3d.

For my Master's return from London to Grims-
thorpe 9 . i 3s .

The trip to London was a long one. When he went alone,
Richard Bertie would travel by horseback, and fairly fast;
but when the duchess with her train travelled to the city,
three days would be spent on the way, with two overnight
stops and shorter pauses, every day, for rest and refreshment.
From Grinisthorpe through the winding roads between tall
trees down to Bourne, the way was over gentle hills, by the
fields of Edenham and Scotelthorpe, with sheep grazing in
the fields, and stretches of corn, wheat and oats, down into
the little town with its narrow street and houses of soft grey
stone, in one of which Catherine's good friend, William.
Cecil, had been born. Upon leaving Bourne, the country
quickly became flat; they were coming into the fenlands,
country of rich black earth, with fields and clumps of wood-
land as far as the eye could see. And the eye could see for
miles across an expanse of land as level as a table top. They
might reach Ermine Street - the North Road built centuries
before by the Romans at Stamford, near William Cecil's
country home, Burghley House; or they might go through
Peterborough with its great cathedral and come into Ermine

162

GRIMSTHORPE

Street just north of the little town of Stilton. At Stilton
Catherine would make her first stop, for a rest and a glass of
wine, before proceeding to Huntingdon where she would
spend her first night. That day she would have journeyed
about forty miles. The next morning the party would leave
Huntingdon and go on to Royston, where they would stop
for dinner and a rest, and then to Puckeridge for the night,
some thirty-two miles in all. The last day was the longest,
but they would break it more than once, at Hoddesdon and
again at Ware for rest and refreshment, and for dinner at
Waltham Abbey. This was a long and tiring day, over forty-
five miles ; but at the end of it the duchess would have arrived
at her destination and could rest.

The total cost for overnight stays, meals and refreshments
on the way, for Catherine and her train came to ^8. os. 6d.,
with an additional charge of 56$. 6d. for the 'rust wagon'
with eight persons with it. 3

While the Barbican was the Berries' London headquarters,
now and then they spent time at Court at Greenwich,
travelling there by river from London. In June of 1562, there
was 'paid for boat hire for my Master and her Grace and
their servants, with carriage of stuff, by water and land from
London to Greenwich, 3. 75. 4<1/, and Tor the meat of
fifteen persons at the Court at Greenwich by the space of
twenty days, .3. los. 4d'. Whenever she travelled, whether
between Grimsthorpe and London, to Court or elsewhere,
the duchess moved with an entourage. In November 'the
suppers of twenty-four persons at the Swan in Charing Cross
which attended upon her Grace at the Court' cost us. 4d.,
and there are numerous other references to her 'train* or to
the persons who attended her.

The last heading in the Household Accounts is 'Stable*.

163

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

This included all the horses, and the food and equipment for
them and their care. In October 1560, there is the entry: 'To
Archibald Barnard for a horse if my Master likes him...
/y, and also an item of 8d. Tor frankinsense to smoke sick
horses'. In October of 1561, 4$. was paid for 'two crewel
reins for gentlewomen', and in December a pair of silken
reins for my Lady' cost 26s. 8d. The duchess also had a
pillion cloth, trimmed with silk fringe, for 30$. Then there
were horse-shoes, saddles, straw for litter, grain and bran,
visits by the veterinary. In July 1562, the costs for the stable
came to .9. ips. sd., and they ran to about that sum every,
month.

Supplies for the kitchen and some typical menus are listed
in another, shorter, book, 4 much as a twentieth-century
housewife might make a marketing list. But the list was for a
heavier diet than the average of today. A list of supplies
reads as follows:

beef

mutton

lings

salt fish

white herring

salt herring

veal

butter, fresh and salt.

Another list reads:

beef
mutton
lamb
fallow deer

capons

cocks

hens

woodcocks

partridges

figs

yeast

herons
pigs
butter
chickens

164

GRIMSTHORPE

red deer eggs

vea l salmon pie

capons porpoise pie

geese mustard seed

oatmeal.

Certainly this was a high-protein diet !

The tables were listed in order of rank; first the Master's
table, then the gentlemen of the household, then the clerks,
the yeomen, the porters and the kitchen. Meat was served in
variety at the Master's table; one typical menu reads, 5
'Boiled meat, boiled beef, pigeons, roast veal, rabbit, baked
venison'. Less meat and more fish appears at the gentlemen's
and clerks' tables, and below that level the fare was almost
entirely fish of various kinds. Fish was served at the Master's
table, too, of course, but not always, and never exclusively.
Oysters, in season, were also served at the Master's table.
Butter was served; at dinner it was on the upper tables, at
supper on all the tables; it was regular fare in the cold
weather, occasional fare in the summer. Apparently fresh
butter was a delicacy then as It is today, for the higher tables
had it, while those below the clerks were served salt butter.
Breakfast was a meal for the children, consisting of eggs and
sometimes mutton; it is not mentioned for any of the rest of
the household.

Reading these lists and menus, one can hardly wonder at
the number of people in the sixteenth century who seemed to
be suffering from gout or from other ailments associated
with too much of a diet of meat. There is no mention of
fresh vegetables or of fruit (except for the occasional oranges,
and figs) ; there is no suggestion that the children were ever
told to 'drink your milk', or even that milk was given to

165

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

them. Meat and fish and starches, washed down with wine
or beer, these were the order of the day, all days.

The Berries lived well, however; they lived well and they
took good care of their children and the members of their
household, they fed them and clothed them, saw to their
well-being, spiritual as well as physical, saw to it that they
had pleasure as well as work. It was a large and complicated
household to run and to manage, and it was costly, as were
many of the households of the gentry. From time to time the
duchess made protestations of poverty, but except for her
years in exile, she always maintained a large establishment.
Unfortunately, no record survives of income, so it is impos-
sible to know what she had to draw on, or what proportion
of her income went into the running of her household.
But it was Catherine's fortune which made possible the
establishment; most if not all of the money was hers. Richard
Bertie came from a simple background, with no particular
means. In all the pages of the household accounts, none the
less, the emphasis is upon the Master, his orders, his expendi-
tures. Even such a small item as the I2d. for the duchess to
play cards was 'by my Master's commandment'. There is no
question, in the records, as to who was the head of the house;
there was no doubt either, one can be sure, in the mind of the
woman who lived so happily, whether in Grimsthorpe or the
Barbican, who watched over the health and education of her
children, who saw to the well-being and the domestic per-
formance of her household Richard Bertie's loyal and
devoted wife, Catherine.

166

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND
RICHARD BERTIE

CATHERINE'S husband was an able man, well educated
and intelligent. William Cecil recognized this, and in
the early autumn of 1563, he tried to draw Richard
Bertie into some form of public service. The actual post
which Cecil had in mind for Bertie does not appear, but
Richard Bertie was not inclined towards public life, and was
unable to imagine himself in whatever position Cecil wished
him to fill. On October 3 oth he wrote to Cecil (his letter was on
the same page with a note from the duchess to her old friend) :

As your loving commendations much comforted me, so
the significations to some public function much encum-
bered me, yea, so much that if your gravity had not been
the better known to me I should have thought it scant
seriously written. But seeing you meant it faithfully, I
pray you in season correct your error in preferring
insufficiency for sufficiency, and to deliver yourself
from rebuke and me from shame. My prayer is that I
shall find you so friendly and readily hereunto inclined
that I shall not need to iterate my suit. 1

Bertie's reluctance to enter into public life did not, how-
ever, entirely prevent him from serving his country. In the
same year, 1563, he was elected a representative to Parlia-
ment from Lincolnshire, along with William Cecil who also

167

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

sat for the county of Lincoln. Bertie sat in the Commons for
four years (the second session of the Parliament of 1563 met
in 1566), and was a member of the committee on the Succes-
sion. Except for the bare fact of his membership on this
committee, there is no evidence of any great activity on
Bertie's part. The second session of the Parliament was
active in many matters; in the question of apparel, of uni-
formity in ecclesiastical vestments, which the queen favoured
and the Puritans opposed, because of the suggestion of
'popishness' ; the question of the subsidy; and, of course, the
perennial question of the succession. Richard Bertie was a
good Puritan, and he would certainly have been staunchly
among those who opposed uniformity of vestments; more-
over, his presence on the succession committee suggests that
he was an active member of the group who were pressing
upon the queen the need for her to marry, or at least to
designate her successor pressure which always roused
Elizabeth Tudor's wrath.

A certain coolness between the queen on the one hand and
Catherine of Suffolk and her husband on the other persisted
as long as Catherine and Richard Bertie lived. It seems not
improbable that their outspoken Puritanism and their
zealous work for the Puritan cause, as well as Richard Bertie's
almost certain stand in the queen's Parliament, were factors
in developing this cookess. Elizabeth, although Protestant,
was definitely conservative. The Puritans' position on practic-
ally everything was abhorrent to her. To Catherine of Suffolk
and her husband, however, the established Church was no
better than a shadow of the Roman Church, and they were
never less than outspoken in their fervent support of the
Puritan position and their work to promote the Puritan
cause. Temperamentally, too, the two women, the queen

168

Richard Bertie, Esquire

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

and the duchess, were poles apart. Elizabeth Tudor had
learned in the hard school of her girlhood to be cautious and
wary; attitudes which appeared to be devious and oppor-
tunist were often positions taken in order not to offend
those whose good will was important to her and to England.
She could be outspoken in her anger, in scolding counsellors
or courtiers who displeased her, but for the most part,
forthrightness was a luxury she had learned to do without.
If she had not been cautious, if she had not, often, paid lip-
service to what she did not herself endorse, she could hardly
have lived through her sister's reign to become England's
queen. The same characteristics which had been her means of
self-preservation then, she was now using for the welfare and
preservation of England. Charming she could be, and
fascinating she certainly was and clever too, but she was the
antithesis of the equally charming and witty but completely
candid and forthright Duchess of Suffolk, the woman who
had never temporized about what she believed and who had
never counted the cost of her outspokenness. So Elizabeth
Tudor and Catherine of Suffolk could never really be
friends, not even in the later part of her life when the years
had somewhat tempered the vehemence of Catherine's
zealousness. As the queen always mistrusted the zealots, the
duchess was disappointed and disillusioned by the subter-
fuges of the queen's Court and by that which she regarded as
weakness in her sovereign the fact that she did not come
out strongly and unequivocally as a champion of Protestant-
ism and an enemy of anything faintly suggesting Catholicism.
In August of 1564, Richard Bertie was one of those who
accompanied the queen on her state visit to Cambridge. The
visit lasted for five days, with entertainment of the most
lavish sort, orations and masques, comedies and tragedies,

169

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

provided by the university for the sovereign's pleasure. The
queen made a long oration in St Mary's church to the entire
university, and the degree of Master of Arts was conferred
upon a number of the gentlemen of the Court. Richard
Bertie was among the distinguished group receiving the
degree, a group which included such men as the Duke of
Norfolk, the Earls of Sussex, Warwick and Oxford, Sir
William Cecil and others.

In 1564-5, the dispute between the duchess and her uncle,
Sir Christopher Willoughby (now Lord Willoughby of
Parham), which had started at the time of Catherine's father's *
death, cropped up for the last time. It concerned the titles to
various manors, which had apparently continued unsettled
throughout the thirty-seven years since William Lord
WUloughby's death. The dispute was settled amiably enough,
for the final depositions read: 'Lord Willoughby resigns all
claim in Willoughby, Eresby, Spillsby, Toynton, Steeping
and Pinchbeck; and he covenants to make an assurance of
these manors to Richard Bertie and Catherine within two
years.' And: 'Richard Bertie and Catherine resign all claim in
Parham, Orford and Hogsthorpe; and they covenant to
make an assurance of these manors to Lord Willoughby
within two years.' 2 The matter did not arise again.

Some time during 1568, Richard Bertie composed an
answer to John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet Against the
Monstrous Regiment of Women. In his answer, Bertie sets forth
the arguments of Knox (whom Bertie calls simply 'author')
one by one, and under each one he writes his 'objection'. It
is a long document, covering both sides of nine closely
written folios, 3 refuting Knox's position, sometimes insisting
that Knox was inconsistent and even that he contradicted
himself. It was never published, and there is no indication

170

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

that it ever came to the attention of the queen. It makes very
clear, however, that even though Richard Bertie may have
been close to John Knox in his thinking on matters religious,
he disagreed categorically with him in his arguments against
women rulers. If the queen ever saw it, she must have been
approving and gratified, although she might have found its
length and rather prolix style somewhat tedious.

Susan Bertie became engaged to Reginald Grey in the year
1570. She was then a girl of about seventeen. It has been
suggested that the comparatively humble background of her
father stood in the way of an earlier and more brilliant
marriage for Catherine and Richard Bertie's daughter. This
may have been so, or it may not have been. Although it was
older than the marriageable age for many sixteenth-century
maidens, seventeen was a good age for Susan and her suitor
to use the duchess's own words of many years earlier
'to begin their loves without our forcing'. Reginald Grey was
the son of Sir Henry Grey, the half-brother of Richard Grey,
Earl of Kent. Richard Grey gambled away what money he
had, and Reginald's father, because of the smallness of the
estate, never assumed the title. But when Reginald Grey
became the suitor for her daughter, and married Susan, the
duchess promptly set to work to get the tide revived and
bestowed upon her son-in-law. Though Catherine of Suffolk
was opposed to marriages made for position rather than for
love, she had a healthy regard for a tide, and she intended that
her daughter's husband should have his. She started in with-
out delay, approaching the queen directly on the subject and
working through her old friend Sir William Cecil, the
queen's principal secretary. She began writing to Cecil about
the matter on July 29th, 1570* with a letter 4 in which she
asked him to deliver a letter from her to the queen, and to

171

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

put in his own good word Tor the furtherance of the same'.
She pointed out Reginald Grey's right to the title, and that he
had never offended in any way but was 'only undone and
unabled to receive what he was rightly born to by his for-
bears' great unthriftiness'. In a postscript to the letter, the
duchess said, 'To make Mr. Grey the more able to serve her
Majesty, Mr. Bertie gives him a hundred pounds land with
his daughter.' And she went on to ask Cecil to keep her
request secret from all save the queen, so that if Mr Grey
should need to 'set up candles' before others of his friends, he
might do so without prejudice to his cause.

Catherine of Suffolk wrote this letter from Wrest, the
Greys' home in Bedfordshire. Apparently she spent most of
the summer of 1570 visiting there, probably preparing for
Susan's marriage, for she wrote twice to Cecil from there in
August, about the matter of Reginald Grey's inheritance, and
about a second matter which she was beginning to press,
namely her desire to have the title of Lord Willoughby (she
herself was, of course, the Baroness Willoughby by inherit-
ance from her father) conferred upon Richard Bertie for his
lifetime, after his death to revert to their son Peregrine. On
September ist Richard Bertie wrote to Cecil from Wrest,
where he had been summoned by his wife's illness. He found
her 'somewhat eased', he told Cecil, and Very much com-
forted* with Cecil's friendly letters which she gave Bertie to
read. Bertie went on to say that he was sending Cecil material
relative to his own birth and fitness to bear the title of Lord
Willoughby, saying:

As I have no cause, so I am no wit ashamed of my parents,
being free English, neither villains nor traitors. And if I
would after the manner of the world bring forth old

172

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, RICHARD AND BERTIE

Abbey scrolls for matter of record, I am sure I can reach
as far backward as Fitzalan ... the arms I give I received
from my father, and they are the same which are
mentioned in the scroU that he showed to the heralds and
confirmed by Clarentius, the old man that was in King
Henry the Eighth's time. 5

So matters stood when, some time in the autumn or winter
of 1570-71, Susan Bertie and Reginald Grey were married.
On April I5th, 1571, the duchess wrote again to Cecil, who
had been elevated to the peerage as Baron Burghley, She
wrote from Grimsthorpe, saying that she understood from
her 'son Grey' that he had 'troubled you and the rest of my
good Lords with his petition for his right to the earldom of
Kent, and that he found you were all very gracious in hearing
of his said suit' . The duchess suggested that Reginald Grey him-
self might not have moved in the matter 'if his friends had not
greatly wished him to it, amongst the which I am sure I shall
be judged one, and the chiefest doer in it'. Catherine went on
to tell Cecil that she had had an audience of the queen in
Toddington (in Bedfordshire, the home of Lord Cheyney,
where the queen was staying on a progress), at which time
the queen 'of her great goodness' had told Catherine

that for my sake she would credit him baron, in the
which as I found myself most bounden to her Majesty, I
gave her Majesty most humble thanks, further saying
that if it pleased her Majesty to think him worthy of
honour, that then I most humbly besought her Majesty
that it would please her to restore him to that he was
born to, or else to let him remain still as he was, for by
any creation he should lose his right in the other. Her
Majesty thought he had no further right, and was

173

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

affronted with me that I should so say, but in the end
I found her Majesty so gracious to me that she said if it
could be found his right, God forbid but he should
have it. 6

The Duchess of Suffolk was not going to settle for a barony
when she believed that her son-in-law was entitled to an
earldom, and the queen, in spite of her annoyance, could not
but admire Catherine for not weakly accepting the lesser tide.

Catherine of Suffolk was far from well all through April
of 1571; in fact, after her return from her exile, the duchess
was plagued with more or less minor illnesses for the re-
mainder of her life. The rigours of her travels overseas had
taken their toll of her health, and while she was not really
seriously ill, even when she had smallpox, she was never
again as robust as she had been before she left England. Late
in April she wrote again to Cecil to thank him for sending to
ask about her health, 'which I confess is yet not very well, for
that I took upon me a greater journey than I was well able to
endeavour after my long sickness'. 7 (Toddington was a good
sixty-five to seventy miles from Grimsthorpe.) But the
duchess was not too unwell to write letters in an effort to
further Reginald Grey's suit. On May I2th she wrote to
William Cecil again, and once again on the 25th, 8 to tell him
that she had had another audience of the queen, when
Elizabeth had been most gracious and friendly at the start,
but that later on the queen's attitude had changed:

... so it was as grievous to me to see her Majesty the
Sunday after so strange to me, in which short time I had
done nothing neither in word nor deed to offend her
Majesty. Surely I must confess her Majesty's strange
countenance ... was no little grief to me, and more than

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

I was able in the sudden to digest, but when with better
leisure I remembered that though men might fail me yet
God would be merciful to me, it made me of better
comfort.

Catherine of Suffolk was not alone in finding the whims
and sudden reversals of her queen bewildering and 'grievous'.
Her faith in her God, however, was as strong and vital a part
of her as ever it had been, and it sustained her even when she
was almost completely discouraged, as she was by the queen's
attitude.

On June i6th the duchess wrote a long letter to Cecil, in
which she raised the question of whether the queen's position
in Reginald Grey's suit was caused by her prejudice against
herself and her husband and her daughter.

I had thought, my good Lord, never to have been
troublesome to you more, but now more occasion
serveth me so to do. I would gladly have showed your
Lordship such talk as passed between her Majesty and me
but seeking you in your chamber I could not find you.
It pleased her Majesty to say of herself that she would not
forego my son's matter. I said for that matter I left it even
to God and her Majesty, only this grieved me, that I
feared the poor gentleman should fare the worse for my
sake. Her Majesty answered most graciously, 'God
defend that,' and acknowledged to me that he had good
right indeed to his name, for the law was fully with him
in it. Marry, her Majesty said she was informed he
rather sought the lands in her hands appertaining to the
earldom under colour of the name. I said I had for that
in his behalf proffered her Majesty a full release of all
such lands in her hands ... and also I complained myself

175

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

to be so continuously unjustly reported to her, for she
laid to my charge that even I should make the claim of
such lands. In the end her Majesty ... withall gave me
better words than a subject could look for at their
prince's hand. But ... what can we think but for the re-
ward of our faithful heart to her we be recompensed
with her great misliking. 9

The duchess went on to say that it was common gossip,
both in and out of Court, that the reason why she was press-
ing Reginald Grey's suit was in order that her daughter
Susan should "have a high place'. Catherine repudiated any
such idea, saying that while it would be only natural for a
mother to wish the best of everything for her child, she was
not doing any of this for Susan's benefit; in fact, she said, she
would personally prefer never to have Susan use the title
than to have Reginald Grey lose it because of her.

Catherine's perseverance was rewarded. Later in the year
1571, Reginald Grey assumed the titles of eighth Baron Grey
de Ruthvin and fifth Earl of Kent On January 2yth, 1572,
Bishop Parkhurst of Norwich, the same John Parkhurst who
had been her chaplain thirty years before, wrote to the
duchess to congratulate her upon her son-in-law's advance-
ment to the earldom, saying that he wished they had him in
Norfolk, 'that having such a one as he is, in commission, we
might together travel to reform that is out of frame, to the
advancement of God in his glory and the suppressing of
Popery in these parts, wherein for want of help I cannot do
that I desire'. 10 Reginald Grey had more to commend him to
Catherine of Suffolk than simply being her daughter's
husband; it is apparent from Parkhurst's letter that he and
Susan's mother saw eye to eye in the matter of religion. But

176

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

he did not live long to enjoy his honours or to work for the
advancement of Protestantism in England; he died within the
next three years, and as he and Susan had no children, he was
succeeded by his brother Henry. Some eight years after his
death his young widow married Sir John Wingfield, a
captain in the queen's army in the Low Countries. Wingfield
was a friend of Susan's brother, and he and Susan named
their only child Peregrine, after him. It was a peculiarly apt
name, because the infant, like his uncle, was bom in a foreign
land, where Susan had gone to follow and be with her soldier
husband.

But although Catherine of Suffolk was successful in her
efforts on her son-in-law's behalf, she did not succeed in the
project which was probably much closer to her own heart.
Her husband was never given the right to assume the title of
Lord Willoughby. Catherine worked hard for it, William
Cecil worked for it; it was debated between commissioners
in London and there was some feeling that Bertie should be
given the right. The findings of the commissioners were laid
before the queen, but the matter got no further. There was
support for Bertie's claim, but there was also strong opposi-
tion, and the queen was pulled from both sides. In 1572, when
she was on a progress, the commissioners laid the claim
before Elizabeth, not for the first time. The queen acknow-
ledged Bertie's claim most graciously, but said that she was
travelling and that after her return to Westminster she would
decide it. Richard Bertie could be gracious too. He sensed
the difficulty of the queen's position, he knew that the old
nobility were opposed to his use of the tide, and he said that
he was satisfied, that the reason why he had wished the case
to be heard was in order to relieve the queen of the belief
that there was no right. From that time on, Bertie did noth-

17?

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

ing to press his claim. The outcome was a bitter disappoint-
ment to Catherine of Suffolk. And Bertie himself would
have liked to enjoy the title. But it was not worth the
wrangling which he realized was bound to develop, perhaps
ending in final denial. And so he held himself satisfied with
the queen's statement that she had heard and was considering
his claim.

Peregrine Bertie, Catherine and Richard Bertie's only son,
had spent part of his youth in the household of William
Cecil. The duchess was anxious for her son to have the
advantages which close association with the queen's principal
secretary, a man of great wisdom and great influence, could
bring to him. It was quite usual in the sixteenth century for a
young man to live in the household of one of the distin-
guished men of the Court. The young Earl of Essex, and
Philip Sidney, to mention only two, were both at various
times members of Cecil's household, so it was not a reflection
upon Peregrine's own father that he was sent from home in
this way; he could get a kind of training, living in Cecil's
house, which he could not possibly get at home. It is an
interesting side-light upon the duchess's boys that whereas
the two sons of Charles Brandon, the soldier and courtier,
were both lads of outstanding promise in learning and in
scholarly pursuits, Peregrine, the son of the more scholarly
and thoughtful Richard Bertie, never excelled as a student
and was to make his name as a soldier and man of action.
But that time was to come later. Catherine would not live to
hear the queen refer to her son as *my good Peregrine', or to
see him distinguish himself overseas in important military

178

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

posts. In his youth, Peregrine went through a rather wild
period and caused his mother considerable anxiety. It was
probably no more than the natural exuberance of a very high-
spirited lad; there was nothing vicious about Peregrine
Bertie, nothing bad. From all accounts he was a normal youth
sowing a few wild oats, more interested in feats of physical
prowess than in intellectual exercises. But Catherine would
have had her son be perfect, and she worried about him. On
June 29th, 1572, she wrote to William Cecil:

I have great cause to think myself very much bounden to
you ... So am I and my husband wholly at your com-
mandment ... and now my good Lord, to perfect this
work there rests no more but it will please you to give
that young man my son some good counsel, to bridle
his youth, and with all haste to dispatch him the Court,
that he may go down to his father while I trust all is well
. . . From Willoughby House in the Barbican this present
Sunday. 11

When he was seventeen years old, there were plans afoot
for Peregrine to marry Elizabeth Cavendish, the daughter of
the Countess of Shrewsbury (Bess of Hardwick). What
happened is not at all clear, but Peregrine did not marry her,
and, on very short acquaintance and without the royal
permission, Elizabeth Cavendish married the Earl of Lennox,
brother of the Lord Darnley who had married Mary Queen
of Scots and had been murdered in 1567. It seems pretty
certain that the reason why Peregrine did not marry her was
because he did not wish, to marry her, and that the young
girl, piqued by Peregrine's attitude, quickly salved her
wounded pride with another, nobler, husband. The queen
was outraged at not being consulted by the Countess of

179

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Shrewsbury about her daughter's marriage, and, in an
effort to mitigate the royal anger, the Earl of Shrewsbury
wrote to the queen in 1574:

I understand of late your Majesty's displeasure is sought
against my wife, for the marriage of her daughter to
Lady Lennox's son. I must confess to your Majesty, as
true is, it was dealt in suddenly, without my knowledge,
but as I dare undertake and insure to your Majesty. For
my wife, finding her daughter disappointed of young
Bertie where she hoped, and the other young gentleman
was inclined to love with a few days' acquaintance, did
her best to further her daughter to this match, without
having therein any other intent or respect than with
reverent duty towards your Majesty she ought. 12

Not only was Peregrine Bertie not interested in marrying
Elizabeth Cavendish; he was not in the least interested in
having his marriage arranged for him. In this he was his
mother's own son. It would be interesting to know exactly
how much Catherine of Suffolk had to do with the matter,
It was, of course, entirely out of character for her to have
tried in any way to press a loveless match upon her son, and
there is no indication that she did. In fact, there is no word
from her, of pleasure or of disappointment, either at the
prospect of the marriage or at its failure to come about. She
did not even write to William Cecil about it, as she did so
often when a problem arose which touched her deeply, as
she did at great length and more than once when Peregrine
actually did decide to marry. For her son's choice of a wife
brought no happiness to his mother.

In the year 1577, when he was nearly twenty-two years
old, Peregrine Bertie was deeply in love with Lady Mary

180

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

Vere, the daughter of the late sixteenth Earl of Oxford and
sister of Edward Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, who had
married William Cecil's daughter Ann in 1571. Brilliant and
charming, self-centred and cruel, Oxford had, by his selfish-
ness and arrogance, brought great unhappiness to his young
wife Ann, and to her father a fact which was well known
to the Duchess of Suffolk, as it was to most people. The
duchess viewed with considerable apprehension the prospect
of her son marrying Oxford's sister, a young woman who
gave every indication of a difficult and unpleasant disposition
which boded ill for a happy married life. But Peregrine was
so much in love with Lady Mary that nothing, certainly no
protest from his father or mother, could shake him. Catherine
realized that fact, she realized also how hot-headed the young
couple were, and she was very frightened lest they might
marry in a hurry, without first getting the queen's approval
of their match. On July 2nd she wrote to William Cecil
about it.

It is very true that my wise son has gone very far with
my Lady Vere, I fear too far to turn. I must say to you
in counsel what I have said to her plainly, that I had
rather he had matched in any other place, and I told her
the causes. Her friends made small account of me, her
brother did what in him lay to deface my husband and
my son; besides, our religions agree not, and I cannot
tell what more. If she should prove like her brother, if
an empire follows her I should be sorry to match so.
She said that she could not rule her brother's tongue nor
help the rest of his faults, but for herself she trusted so to
use her as I should have no cause to mislike her. And
seeing it was so far forth between my son and her, she

181

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

desired my good will and asked no more. 'That is a
seemly thing,' quoth I, Tor you to live on; for I fear that
Master Bertie will so mislike these dealings that he will
give little more than his good will if he will give that.
Besides, if her Majesty shall mislike of it, sure we turn
him to the wide world/ She told me how Lord Sussex
and Master Hatton had promised to speak for her to the
Queen, and that I would require you to do the like. I
told her her brother used you and your daughter so evil
that I could not require you to deal in it. Well, if I would
write she knew you would do it for my sake; and since
there was no undoing it she trusted I would for my
son's sake help now. 13

It does not appear whether or not Lord Burghley put in a
word with the queen in favour of the marriage. As Catherine
had remarked in her letter, he had no reason to love anyone
connected with the Earl of Oxford. But less than a fortnight
later, on July I4th, the duchess wrote to him again, enclosing
a letter from her husband indicating how troubled he was
about his son's proposed marriage.

If he knew as much as I of Lord Oxford's dealings, it
would trouble him more ; but the case standing as it doth,
I mean to keep it from him. I cannot express how much
it grieveth me that my son in this weightiest matter hath
so far forgotten himself to the trouble and disquiet of
his friends. He is like enough to be his own undoing
and the young lady's too, for if his wilfulness and un~
courteous dealings should by any means come to my
husband's ears, I believe he would make his son but a
small marriage. I know not what to do therein. He can-
not take it well at my hand that I should seek to bestow

182

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

his son as it were against his will: and yet if her Majesty
could be won to like of it, my husband would be the
easier won to it if Lord Oxford's great uncourtesy do
not too much trouble him. 14

The duchess wrote from Willoughby House in London,
where she had undoubtedly come in order to be near the
young people. Her husband, 'so far off', was probably at
Grimsthorpe. Neither one of them liked the idea of their son
marrying Lady Mary, but Catherine was about ready to
accept it as inevitable. She was reluctant to press her old
friend to intervene any further with the Veres, who had
treated him and his child so badly; she was so reluctant to do
it that she could only hint, at the end of this letter, at the need
to win the queen's approval. So much she could not resist
doing. Peregrine, she was now certain, was going to marry
Lady Mary Vere, with or without approval from his parents
or his queen. Catherine was nearly beside herself with worry.
If her son and Lady Mary were to marry without Elizabeth's
knowledge and approval, it would almost inevitably end
Peregrine's future as a servant of his queen. No one knew
better than Catherine of Suffolk how angry Elizabeth Tudor
could become when members of her Court married without
her consent, and to what lengths the royal anger could go.
Moreover, Lady Mary Vere was a maid of honour, and as
such her marriage was in the gift of the Crown; if she were
to defy this and marry without the queen's approval, both
she and the man who married her would be ruined, nothing
less. The duchess was on the horns of a cruel dilemma. She
hated the whole business, but she knew beyond any doubt
that her son's whole future was at stake, and the one person
to whom she could turn for help in winning the queen to this

183

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

marriage which she herself so hated was the one man she
could not bear to ask. And so, at fifty-eight years of age,
Catherine of Suffolk was driven to hinting for Cecil's help.
It was a hateful position for the proud and outspoken
duchess, a position such as she had never been in before and
one which she would have rejected now except to save her
son. Peregrine was the only one of her sons who had lived
to manhood for him the duchess would do virtually
anything.

William Cecil knew this; he knew how hard it must have
been for Catherine to write to him as she did. What action
he took in the matter is not recorded, but it is safe to guess
that he intervened with the queen on behalf of Catherine's
son and his chosen bride. The Earl of Oxford had separated
from Ann Cecil, heaping insults upon her and upon her
father, but Cecil was not one to let his own bitterness stand
in the way of helping his old friend. In any case, Queen
Elizabeth finally agreed to the marriage, and Peregrine
Bertie and Lady Mary Vere were wed some time after the
beginning of the year 1578.

Catherine's relations with her future daughter-in-law had
become more amicable by the end of 1577, so much so that
together they hatched up a scheme for improving the
relations between Lady Mary's brother and his rejected
wife, who, with their baby daughter (whom Oxford had
refused even to see) was living at her father's home. From
Willoughby House the duchess wrote to Lord Burghley on
December

... on Thursday I went to see my Lady Mary Vere. After
other talks, she asked me what I would say to it if my
Lord her brother would take his wife again. 'Truly,'

184

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE
quoth I, 'nothing would comfort me more, for now I
wish to your brother as much good as to my own son/
'Indeed/ quoth she, 'He would very fain see the child
and is loth to send for her.' 'Then/ quoth I, 'And you
will keep my counsel, we will have some sport with him.
I will see if I can get the child hither to me, when you
shall come hither, and whilst my Lord your brother is
with you I will bring in the child as though it were some
other of my friends' and we shall see how nature will
work in him to like it, and tell him it is his own after/
'Very well/ quoth she, 'we agree thereon/ ... I mean
not to delay in it otherwise than it shall seem good to
your Lordship and in that sort that may best like you. I
will do what I can either in that or in anything else that
may any way lay in me. 15

The duchess had found something she might be able to do
for her friend to repay, in some part, the great debt she felt
she owed to him. Later on in the same day, Catherine was
struck by the thought that Lady Mildred Cecil, Burghley's
wife, might be reluctant to fall in with her plan, not wishing
to risk losing her little granddaughter. On the heels of her
first letter the duchess sent a second note to Lord Burghley.

After I had sealed my letter, I began to remember what
grief it would be to my lady your wife to part with the
child. But let her not fear that, for after he hath seen it it
can not tarry here and though he would, for here is no
apt lodging for her. And I doubt not after the first sight
but he will be well enough content to come to her at her
own home. But if I may counsel, in no way let him not
be arrested in his desire. 16

185

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Unfortunately there is no record of whether the scheme
was ever put into effect. Oxford and Ann were reconciled,
but not until 1582, nearly five years later.

After their marriage, Peregrine and his bride went to live
at Grimsthorpe, while Catherine and Richard Bertie stayed
in London. They moved into a house in Hampstead, which
at that time was not a part of the city but was country, and
somewhat rolling country at that. Possibly the duchess and
her husband took the house there when Catherine turned
Grimsthorpe over to her son and his bride, because they
found that they were missing the green fields and tall
trees and the feeling of openness and space in Lincoln-
shire. Willoughby House stood in a closely built-up part of
London, and Catherine, who was far from well, undoubtedly
felt cramped and confined living there for any length of time.
In spite, however, of the beautiful surroundings in which
they started their life together, Peregrine's marriage to Lady
Mary did not begin auspiciously. The bride's temper was a
hot one, and perhaps Peregrine himself was none too patient.
Also, it appears that they took no pains at all in the upkeep of
Grimsthorpe. On March I2th, 1578, the duchess wrote a
letter to Burghley on behalf of one Charles Chamberlain, a
kinsman of hers who hoped for service under him; on behalf
of 'one from Boston', who had money due to him for
service in Ireland; and finally

for a more unthankful person, in counsel may I say it,
for my daughter Mary and her husband, who will in any
wise use a house out of hand and I fear will so govern it
as my husband and I shall have small comfort of it and
less gain; for what disorders they make we must pay for
it, but neither the young folk nor my husband so con-

186

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE
siders of it yet. That my Lady loves wine who knows
her that knows not that ... and my son hates it not ...
my suit therefore is if it shall not mislike you or that you
may do it, to grant them ... impost for two tuns of wine
to be taken at Hull or Boston, and I dare better be
bound to you that it shall be all drunken quickly in their
house than orderly or well spent. 17

Catherine went on to ask Burghley to do this as promptly
as he could, in order that the young people would stay
longer in the country, 'if they outrage not too much so as
we shall not be able to bide it/ This letter is revealing of
Catherine's concern about the way her son and his wife were
living, and of the fact that apparently she felt that they were
drinking more than was good for them. It seems surprising
that she asked Burghley to make the wine available to them,
since obviously she did not approve of the way they would
drink it, but perhaps she had faced the fact that they were
going to do it anyway, and felt that on the whole it was
better for them to stay in the country than to come back to
town, which they might well do if they could not get what
they wanted at Grimsthorpe.

The situation was no better late in September. Thomas
Cecil, Lord Burghley '$ eldest son, wrote to his father on the
25th:

My wife and I have of late made a little progress into
Lincolnshire ... Thus being on my way from Grantham
to my Lady of Suffolk's which I take in my way home-
wards ... as touching such disagreements as have fallen
out there ...this far I understand, that my Lady of
Suffolk's coming down from London was to appease
certain unkindnesses grown between her son and his

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

wife. More particularly as yet I cannot write at this time,
but I think my Lady Mary will be beaten with that
rod which heretofore she prepared for others. 18

Catherine of Suffolk was miserable about the whole
business. She was quite ill in the autumn of 1579, ill in body
and in great pain, but also in such anguish of mind over her
son's troubles that it caused concern to members of her
household, some of whom appear to have commented upon
her mental state. On September 23rd she wrote to Lord
Burghley that she was very much upset at discovering that
he had been given the impression that she was 'senseless'.

I beseech you my good Lord not to think, though I be
sickly that I am altogether senseless as my foolish foot-
man hath given your Lordship rather to think. I assure
you, since yesternight that my daughter [Susan] came
from London and told it me, I have not been quiet, as
this bearer can tell whom I have dispatched so soon as
my extremity would suffer me to write this letter. And
where it pleaseth you of your goodness to consider of
any by his foolish talk ... I beseech your Lordship for
God's sake there may be no more words of it . . . Craving
your pardon both for my foolish man and myself... at
Hampstead, in pain of body as this bearer can tell.

But whatever I am in weakness of body, Your
Lordship's very assuredly till it will please God to call
me. 19

There was nothing wrong with Catherine's mind. But she
was all but distraught over her son's unhappiness. Moreover,
she could see nothing whatever that she could do to help in
the situation, a fact which only increased her worry and

188

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

misery. Obviously Lady Mary was behaving very badly, and
obviously part of her bad behaviour was directed at Pere-
grine's mother. In March of 1580, the duchess wrote a letter
to the Earl of Leicester.

I am very sorry that it is my evil fortune to be trouble-
some to any of my friends, especially being brought to
the same by the evil hap of my dear son's marriage ...
now I hear by some of my friends [she] hath in these few
days shown such a letter of mine as doth show how near
I came to lose my head if she had not by good hap
escaped some dangers, as it seemeth, wrought to her by
me. What they were I know not. But it shall please
her Majesty to be so much my gracious lady, to appoint
any to examine me of any doings towards her. I trust
they shall find no likelihood in me of losing my head,
nay, nor wrong in writing of my sharp letter, all
circumstances considered ... 20

Catherine probably wrote that particular letter to Leicester
thinking that he, being the queen's favourite, could do more
than anyone to counteract in Elizabeth's mind the sort of
malicious stories her daughter-in-law was circulating about
her. A month later, however, she had stood inaction just as
long as she could. Her son's problem was so acute that she
felt that something must be done, and that she must take a
hand in getting it done. In April of 1580, on Easter Monday,
she wrote to Lord Burghley once more.

I am ashamed to be so troublesome to your Lordship
and others of my good Lords of her Majesty's honour-
able council, specially in so uncomfortable a suit as for

189

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

license of thek assent of the absence of my only dear son,
in whose company I hoped with comfort to have
finished my last days. But ... either I must see his doleful
pining and vexed mind at home, which hath brought
him to such a state of mind and body as so many
knoweth and can witness it, or else content myself with
his deske to seek such fortune abroad as may make him
forget some griefs and give him better knowledge and
experience to serve her Majesty and his country at his
return. The time he desketh for the same is five years,
so as I am never like after his departure to see him again;
yet am I loath he should so long be out of her Majesty's
realm wherefore I cannot consent to any more than three
years. Oh, my good Lord, you have children and there-
fore you know how dear they be to their parents, your
wisdom also is some help to govern your fatherly
affections by ... but alas, I a poor woman which with
great pains and travail many years hath by God's mercy
brought an only son from tender youth to man's state
... so hoping no w to have reaped some comfort for my
long pains ... in place of comfort I myself must be the
suitor for his absence, to my great grief and sorrow. But
God's will be fulfilled, who worketh all for the best to
them that love and fear Him; wherefore were not that
hope of Him thoroughly settled in me, I think my very
heart would burst for sorrow. I understand my sharp
letters be everywhere showed, but were the bitter causes
that moved them as well opened and known, I am sure
my very enemies ... would not only pity me and my
husband's wrongs but both my children's ... I most
humbly beseech her Majesty even for God's sake there-
fore to give him leave to go to sea and live in all places

190

SUSAN AND PEREGRINE, AND RICHARD BERTIE

where it shall please God to hold him, always with the
duty of a faithful subject to serve ... her Majesty ... 21

That heartbroken letter is the last one from the duchess
that has been preserved. It is a pitiful letter, and yet, in spite
of her overwhelming grief which had almost beaten her
down, Catherine's faith in the love of her God was as strong
as ever it had been. Not even this bitter sorrow and dis-
illusionment, which had come to her when she was no
longer young, no longer strong, could shake her abiding

faith.

Peregrine did not go overseas in 1580; he did not go until
1582, and by that time he and Lady Mary had resolved their
problems, and Lady Mary had settled down to be a loyal and
loving wife. It was very sad that the first years of their
marriage were such unhappy ones, tragic that during
Catherine's life her daughter-in-law caused her only heart-
break and worry. The duchess was a devoted mother; she
loved her children dearly and their welfare was her greatest
concern. In the afternoon of her life she would have been
completely contented if she could only have seen her two
children living happy, useful lives, raising their families,
bringing her grandchildren to see her. Such happiness was no
more than Catherine of Suffolk deserved. But it was not to
be. Her daughter, Susan, had been saddened by the loss of
her husband, Reginald Grey, soon after his elevation to the
peerage, and this loss was a personal grief to the duchess too;
and while Susan made a second, happy, marriage with Sir
John Wingfield, that did not come until later, in 1582.
Peregrine and Lady Mary had six children, the eldest one
born in 1582. And they named their youngest child, their
only daughter, Catherine, after Peregrine's mother. Lady

191

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

Mary had overcome her antagonism towards her mother-
in-law. But the duchess did not live to see the change in Lady
Mary. She never saw any of her grandchildren, nor did she
see the ultimate happiness of her own children.

192

ENDINGS

ON September ipth, 1580, Catherine of Suffolk died.
It was almost exactly forty-seven years since the day
when she had stood at Charles Brandon's side to be-
come the Duchess of Suffolk. Her life since that day in her
far-off girlhood had been a full one, full of laughter and tears,
of serenity and adventure, security and danger. Whatever
had happened to her, she had always been a personage, a
great lady. While her life did not alter the course of empire,
did not influence kings or statesmen, she played, directly or
indirectly, a part of considerable consequence in the develop-
ment of Protestantism in England. Great figures in the
Reformation, Hugh Larimer, Martin Bucer, John a Lasco, all
owed much to her, all at some time were helped and stimu-
lated by her generosity and encouragement.

There were women rulers in Europe during Catherine's
life, Mary and Elizabeth in England, Mary in Scotland,
Catherine de Medicis in France; there were learned women,
'blue-stockings' the Cooke sisters, Mildred who married
William Cecil and her equally erudite sisters; and there was
the ill-fated, scholarly little Lady Jane Grey. Except for such
women as these, however, the females of Catherine's day
were retiring and quiet people, perhaps beautiful and charm-
ing, but quite simply shadowy backgrounds for their hus-
bands, and their sole purpose in life was to run their homes,
to bear and rear their children and to keep themselves in the

193

CATHERINE, DUCHESS OF SUFFOLK

background. Catherine of Suffolk was quite different from
any of these women. She was not royalty, she was not a blue-
stocking ; and she was never a shadow of anyone, man or
woman. Her education had been as good but no better than
that of the average girl-child of the gentry, and after her
childhood she had not pursued scholarship. But she was
intelligent and thoughtful, fearless and outspoken, and she
was devout and sure in her belief and tireless in her zeal. She
worked hard and lovingly among the country folk of her
home county of Lincoln, to bring to them the message of the
reformed religion, to make certain that the Gospel was
preached to them in words which they could understand,
that the Word of God, the Bible, was available to them in
the English language. A sixteenth-century writer referred to
her as 'that devout woman of God', and one writing in the
twentieth century called her 'almost the mother of English
Puritanism'.

She was married twice, both times quite happily, and she
was a good wife and mother. Probably she was fortunate in
that both of her husbands were proud, not only of her
beauty and wit, of her devotion to them and her success as
the mistress of their homes, but also of her independence of
mind, her individuality and the fact that she was never just
their shadow, but a vital, forceful personality herself. Men in
the sixteenth century did not always want these qualities in
their wives; both the Duke of Suffolk and Richard Bertie
accepted them with pride and satisfaction.

She was singularly modern in the midst of the sixteenth
century, modern in her quiet assumption that in addition to
home-making and caring for her children a woman could
and should make a contribution to the spiritual well-being of
the people, in her courage and outspokenness, and, above all,

194

ENDINGS

modern in her refusal to accept beliefs and customs simply
because they had always been accepted.

She died quietly, either in London or at Grimsthorpe (one
hopes it was the latter, but one cannot be certain), and she
was buried in the church in Spilsby in Lincolnshire, north-
east of Grimsthorpe, near Tattershall and close by her own
manor of Eresby. Eighteen months later her husband died
and was buried beside her. An impressive monument was
raised in their memory in the lovely fourteenth-century
church where they lie with the breezes from the North Sea
blowing freshly about as they blew over the gardens in
Suffolk, not so many miles to the south, in the days when
little Catherine Willoughby played there. One may go to the
church and look at the stone effigies of Catherine and Richard
Bertie, and read that this is the tomb of 'Ricardi Bertie et
Catherinae Ducissae Suffolkiae, Baronissae de Willoby et
Eresby'. But the most vital memorials of Catherine of
Suffolk are her letters to William Cecil, explaining her
refusal to make an important but loveless match for her
first-born son; her letter after her boys' death, reaffirming her
faith in God; the edition of Larimer's Sermons, dedicated to
her Valiant spirit'; and, above all, the love and gratitude of
the country people to whom she had made God and His love
accessible and understandable and real. She lived in the!
sixteenth century, and the events of that century dictated her!
life, but they could never circumscribe it. Her beauty of \
mind and body, her charm and wit, and her spiritual integrity
and fearlessness were not merely characteristics of the six-
teenth century: they were eternal.

NOTES

Iti writing this book, I have drawn upon manuscript material in the Public Record
Office (P.R.O.), in the British Museum (B.M.) and in private manuscript collections, the
Salisbury MSS at Hatfield House and the Ancaster MSS deposited in the Lincolnshire
Archives Office; also upon contemporary chroniclers. Descriptions are based upon first-
hand observations, in Suffolk, Lincolnshire and Germany, checked against historical
descriptions. The following notes are for the purpose of identifying particular references;
I have kept them to a minimum, feeling that copious notes are out of place in this book.

CHAPTER I (pages 21-32)

1 B.M., Stowe MSS, 656, fol. jb fT.

2 Cal L. & P. Henry FIJI, vol. IV, pt 3, no. 5508.

CHAPTER n (pages 33-49)

i The story about the burial of Maria de Saunas is set forth in Lady Cecilie Goff,
Woman of the Tudor Age (London, 1930). I have in my possession letters from the Rev.
Canon James L. Cartwright, librarian and archivist of Peterborough Cathedral, saying
that the story cannot be supported, that the leaden coffin within the grave was not opened
and the body was not discovered.

CHAPTER m (pages 50-63)

1 Thomas Fuller, Church History of Britain, vol. IV, p. 235.

2 John Strype, Annals, vol. II, pt ii, p. 347- , TT . . __

3 Ibid., p. 496. I am indebted to Professor Kenneth Setton of the University of Penn-
sylvania for translating the verse.

4 On Hugh Larimer, c his Sermons', also Allan G. Chester, Hugh Latimer (Philadelphia,

1954).

CHAPTER rv (pages 64-78)

1 P R O S.P. 10-8-35. (Unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public Record
Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.)

2 Ibid., 10-10-39 (printed in P. F. Tytler, England under the reigns of Edward VI and Mary

(1839), vol. I, p. 323)-

3 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. II, pt 11, p. 130.
* P.R.O., S.P. 10-10-2.

5 Ibid., IO-IO-6.

CHAPTER v (pages 79-96)

1 H.M.C., Cal. Ancaster MSS, p. 457- , * .v *f.

2 I am indebted to Professor Albert J. Schmidt for drawing my attention to this reter-

- ibic,, *x. 10-14-47- n interesting thing about ^^Jf * *? r f CT ^ ce J
niece. The word is transcribed almost everywhere as wife. All Chester, in Hue
has it niece. I have examined the manuscript with great care,

197

NOTES

the P.R.O. The word is clearly nesse (i.e., niece) and probably refers to Mary Glover,
Latimer's favourite niece, with whom he made his home much of the time. Latimer, of
course, was never married.
5 Conyers Read, The Tudors (New York, 1936), p. 122.

CHAPTER vi (pages 97-109)

1 Parker Society, Ridley Letters (1841), p. 382.

2 The account of Gardiner's questioning of Richard Bertie, and of the Berties* flight, is
set forth in Foxe, Acts and Monuments (4th edition, ed. Josiah Pratt), vol. VIII, pp. 569 ff.

3 Lady Georgina Bertie, Five Generations of a Loyal House (1845), pt i, p. 23, n. 2.

CHAPTER vn (pages 110-29)

1 Foxe spells the name Santon, today it is spelled Xanten; it is derived from the Latin
sanctus.

2 'Narrative of the Pursuit of English Refugees in Germany under Queen Mary',
Royal Hist Soc. Trans*, new ser., vol. XI, p. 113.

3 Lady G. Bertie, Five Generations of a Loyal House, Appendix U.

4 Lady C. Goff, Woman of the Tudor Age, p. 240.

CHAPTER vm (pages 130-46)

1 P.R.O., S.P. 12-2-10.

2 Ibid., 12-3-9.

3 H. Gee, Elizabethan Prayer Book (1902), p. 210.

4 Cal. Pat. Rolls, Eliz., vol. I, p. 25.

5 P.R.O., S.P, 12-6-2.

6 Ibid., 12-43-40.

CHAPTER ix (pages 147-66)

1 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Ancaster MSS, vii/A/2.

2 Lady GofF, Woman of the Tudor Age, p. 262, says that Lady Elinor was Elinor Clifford,
but Miss Strickland, Lives of the Tudor Princesses (1868), p. 296, says that Elinor Clifford
died in 1547.

3 This may mean rustic, i.e., country, wagon, or it may, as the Cal. Ancaster MSS
(p. 472) suggests, mean 'rush' wagon.

4 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Ancaster MSS, vii/A/5.

5 Ibid,

CHAPTER x (pages 167-92)

1 B.M., Lansdowne MSS, 35, no. 90,

2 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Ancaster MSS, v/B/4.

3 B.M., Add. MSS, 48043, fol. 1-9.

4 H.M.C., Cal. Salisbury MSS, vol. I, p. 477.

5 Ibid., p. 482.

6 P.R.O., S.P. 12-77-52.

7 Ibid., 12-77-63.

8 Ibid., 12-78-18.
& Ibid., 12-78-42.

10 Cambridge Univ. Library, MS. Ee. 11.34. fol- ?2v. I am indebted to Sir John Neale
for calling my attention to this reference.

198

NOTES

1 1 B.M., Lansdowne MSS, 28, no. 62. The letter is misdated, 1579, in the catalogue. The
last figure is somewhat obscure; it is possible to read it as either a 9 or a 2, but in 1579 the
29th June, the date of the endorsement, was a Wednesday, whereas in 1572 it was a Sunday,
which fits the letter. Moreover, in 1579 the letter would not make sense, since Peregrine
Bertie was married in 1578.

12 GorT, Woman of the Tudor Age, p. 307.

13 Cal. Salisbury MSS, vol. XIII, p. 146.

14 Hatfield House, Salisbury MSS, 160/135.

15 B.M., Lansdowne MSS, 25, no. 27.

16 Ibid.

17 Hatfield House, Salisbury MSS, 160/119.

18 Cal. Salisbury MSS, vol. II, p. 205.
19. B.M., Lansdowne MSS, 28, no. 65.

20 GofF, op. cit., p. 315.

21 B.M., Lansdowne MSS, 25, no. 39.

INDEX

ALASCO,JOHN, 122, 193
Anne of Cleves, 45

BERTIE, CATHERINE, see Catherine Duchess
of Suffolk

Bertie, Peregrine, birth, 119; 128, lySff;
marriage, 184

Bertie, Richard, second husband of
Catherine of Suffolk, 89-91 ; marriage to
Catherine, 92; 98ff; exile, chap, vii
passim; master at Grimsthorpe, chap, ix
passim; public service, 167-8; answer to
Knox, First Blast of the Trumpet, 170; 177,
195

Bertie, Susan, daughter of Catherine and
Richard Bertie, birth, 95; 104, 171, 173,
191

Bertie, Thomas, father of Richard Bertie,

Bilney, Thomas, 54-6
Boleyn, Anne, 31, 36
Bomelius, Henry, pastor of St Willebrod s

church in Wesel, 119
Brandon, Charles Duke of Suffolk, 17, 25;

marriage to French Queen, 26; marriage

to Catherine Willoughby, 32; 38-9, 4*

46; death, 48
Brandon, Charles, son of Duke of Suffolk

and the French Queen, 17, 33-4
Brandon, Charles, younger son of

Catherine and Duke of Suffolk, 42, 63,

65, 79ff; death, 83
Brandon, Eleanor, 17, 29, 49
Brandon, Frances, 17, 29, 3L 4, 49, 86,

95; death, 140 .

Brandon, Henry, eldest son of Catherine

and Charles Brandon, 41, 63, 65, 79ff;

death, 83
Bucer, Martin, 81-2, 121, 193

CATHERINE OF ARAGON, 21-3. 3; divorced,
36; 38-9; death, 40

Catherine Duchess of Suffolk, 17; birth, 21 ;
early childhood, 24; ward of Charles
Brandon, 25, 28-30; first marriage, 32;
birth of sons, 41-2; charm and grace,
43, 66; meets Anne of Cleves, 45; at

King's marriage to Catherine Parr, 48;
wit, 43, 50, 102; character, 50; Protestant
leanings, 51; meeting with Hugh
Latimer, 38, 57; influence of Latimer,
53, 56-7, 91, 97; Gardiner's antipathy
towards her, 58, 96, 97ff; speculations
about her remarriage, 61 ; life at Grims-
thorpe, 64, 1478"; belief and work for
Protestantism, 66-7; 73, 75, U7; friend ~
ship with William Cecil, 68, 75, 79, 85,
87, 131, 143, 148, 153, i?l. 175, 179, 181,
184-6, 188, 189-91; zeal and impatience
with caution, 69, 131-8, 168; friendship
for Somerset, 70, 75; for Warwick, 75;
guardian of Catherine Pan's infant,
71-3; attitude towards son Henry's
marriage, 76-7; move to Kingston, 81;
friendship with Martin Bucer, 81-2, 121 ;
death of sons, 83-4; considering re-
marriage, 89; marriage to Richard
Bertie, 92; birth of daughter, 95; flight
and exile, 105-39; birth of son Peregrine,
119; return to England, 139; relations
with Catherine and Mary Grey, 1406;
household at Grimsthorpe, chap, ix
passim; relations with Queen Elizabeth,
168-9, 174; efforts to get title for
Reginald Grey, I7iff; for Richard
Bertie, I72ff; worry about Peregrine,
I 7 8ff; ill health, 172, 174, 188 ; death, 193
Catherine Howard, 46-8
Catherine Parr, 48, 59; religious pamphlet,

69; death 71
Cecil, Lady Mildred, wife of William

Cecil, 133,185, 193
Cecil, Thomas, 141, 187
Cecil, William, Lord Burghley t friend ot
Catherine of Suffolk, 68; character,
68-9, 130-1; efforts to dispel enmity
between Somerset and Warwick, 75;
letters to, from Catherine of Suffolk,
72, 74, 75, 76-7, 85, 88, 133. U3, 173,
174, 175, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, ISO,
188, 189; mentioned, 79, *3<$, I43 H8
153, 167, 170, 177, 193
Chapuys, Eustace, ambassador trom

Emperor Charles V, 33, 39, 6*
Charles V, emperor, 33, 102

203

INDEX

Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Can-
terbury, 37, 42, 70, 97, 102, 122
Cromwell, Thomas, 45

DORSET, MARQUESS OF, see Grey, Henry

Dudley, Lord Guildford, 93-4

Dudley, John, Earl of Warwick, Duke of

Northumberland, 43, 59, 74fF, 78
Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester, 189

EDWARD VI, 42, 63, 66, 70, 93 ; death, 94
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 36, 42-3, 68,

129; accession, 130; 136, 139, 140, 143,

145, 157; relations with Catherine of

Suffolk, 168; 173, 175, 183
Erasmus, Desiderius, New Testament, 54;

122
Erbagh, Earl of, 126

FRANCIS I, KING OF FRANCE, 26

GARDINER, STEPHEN, 22, 61, 62, 96, 97;

moves against Catherine of Suffolk, 98ff
Grey, Henry, Marquess of Dorset, Duke of

Suffolk, 31, 86, 93-4
Grey, Lady Jane, 87, 93-6, 140
Grey, Lady Katherine, 140-2
Grey, Lady Mary, 140, 142-6
Grey, Reginald, husband of Susan Bertie,

I7iff; death, 177
Grimsthorpe, Lincolnshire, 22, 41, 46-7,

54, 64-5, 85, 87, 139; chap, ix passim; 186

HENRY VII, 25

Henry VIII, 21-3, 25, 30-1, 36, 38, 40, 42,

44-9, 56, 60-2; death, 63
Hertford, Earl of, see Seymour, Edward
Howard, Thomas, 3rd Duke of Norfolk,

42, 94, 96

KET'S REBELLION, 73
Knox, John, 51, 170

LATIMER, HUGH, 37-8, 53-8, 74, 89-92, 97,

102, 140, 193

Leicester, Earl of, see Dudley, Robert
Lisle, Lord, see Dudley, John
Louis XII, King of France, 17, 26

MARY, infant daughter of Catherine Parr

and Thomas Seymour, 71-3
Mary, Queen of England, 22-3, 36, 43, 57,

59 93-6", 99, 102, 130, 136

Mary, the French Queen, sister of Henry
VIII, 17-19 ; marriage to Duke of Suffolk,
26; character, 28; 30; death, 18, 32; 65

Mason, Sir John, ambassador from Queen
Mary to Netherlands, 120

NORFOLK, DUKE OF, see Howard, Thomas
Northampton, Marquess of, see Parr,

William
Northumberland, Duke of, see Dudley,

John

OTTO HEINRICH, Prince Palatine, 121
Oxford, Earl of, see Vere, Edward

PARHAM OLD HALL, Suffolk, 21, 24, 28, 170

Parkhurst, John, chaplain to Duke and
Duchess of Suffolk, 51; verse eulogizing
duchess, 52

Parr, William, Marquess of Northampton,
62, 69, 72

Perrault, Antoine de, Bishop of Arras and
dean of minster at Santon, 112

Perusell, Master Francis, pastor of congre-
gation in Wesel, ill, 112, 117

Pilgrimage of Grace, 41

Poland, 61, 122-3, 127-8

RADZIWELL, NICHOLAS, Count Palatine of

Vilna, 122, 127
Ridley, Nicholas, 97, 102

ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, 79, 81
Salinas, Maria de, mother of Catherine

Duchess of Suffolk, 18, 21, 30, 39, 40;

death, 44; burial, 44, 197
Santon, town in Duchy of Cleves, 111-12
Seton, Alexander, chaplain to Duke and

Duchess of Suffolk, 51
Seymour, Edward, ist Earl of Hertford,

Duke of Somerset, 62, 63, 70, 73-8
Seymour, Jane, 42
Seymour, Thomas, Baron Seymour of

Sudeley, 71

Sigismund II, King of Poland, 61, 122, 127
Somerset, Duke of, see Seymour, Edward
Spilsby, Lincolnshire, burial place of

Catherine and Richard Bertie, 195
Suffolk, Duchess of, see Mary, the French

Queen
Suffolk, Duke of, see Brandon, Charles;

Grey, Henry
Sweating sickness, 82-4

VAN DER DELFT, FRANCOIS, ambassador
from Emperor Charles V, 59

204

INDEX

Vere, Edward, ijth Earl of Oxford, 181-2,

184, 186
Vere, Lady Mary, 180-92

WARWICK, EARL OF, see Dudley, John

Weinheim, in Palatinate, 121

Wesel, Hansa town in Duchy of Cleves,

in, 114-20

Westhorpe, Suffolk, 17, 28-31
Willoughby, Lady, see Salinas, Maria de

Willoughby, Catherine, see Catherine

Duchess of Suffolk

Willoughby, Sir Christopher, 24, 170
Willoughby, William Lord, 21-2; death,

24
Wilson, Dr Thomas, tutor to Henry and

Charles Brandon at Cambridge, 79
Wingfield, Sir John, second husband of

Susan Bertie, 177, 191
Wolsey, Thomas Cardinal, 23
Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, 61, 62, 91, 99

A NOTE ON THE TYPE

THE TEXT of this book has been set on the Monotype
in a type face named Bembo. The roman is a copy of a
letter cut for the celebrated Venetian printer Aldus
Manutius by Francesco Griffo, and first used in Cardinal
Bembo's L>e Aetna of 1495 hence the name of the
revival. Griffo's type is now generally recognized, thanks
to the researches of Mr. Stanley Morison, to be the first
of the old face group of types. The companion italic is
an adaptation of a chancery script type designed by the
Roman calligrapher and printer Lodovico degli Arrighi,
called Vincentino, and used by him during the 152,0*5.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

EVELYN READ is the wife of the late Conyers Kead y the
distinguished Tudor historian. Born in Philadelphia in
1901, Mrs. Read attended the Baldwin School in Bryn
Mawr and later Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Wit/z
Mr. Read, she edited ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND, a contem-
porary account by John Clapham, for publication in
1951. While her husband was writing his highly ac-
claimed two-volume life of 'William Cecil, Lord Burgh-
Iey 7 Mrs. Read became interested in Catherine of
Suffolk, who was a cherished -friend of Burghley's. She
stayed where the Duchess had stayed, followed her
footsteps to Germany, where Catherine lived as an exile,
and slept in her bedroom at Grimsthorpe, which is still
inhabited by her lineal descendants. Though she has
written many articles and pamphlets and did research
for many of her husband's books, MY LADY SUFFOLK
is her first full-length book. Mrs. Read lives in Villanova,
Pennsylvania.

January 1963

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "MY LADY SUFFOLK"

See other formats